Magnitude 6.6 Earthquake Strikes Hawaii
Posted October 15, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A magnitude 6.6 earthquake shook Hawaii early Sunday, causing a landslide that blocked a major highway, knocked out power, and forced Governor Linda Lingle to declare a statewide disaster.
Communication problems prevented confirmed reports, but there are believed to be only minor injuries and no fatalities.
The quake hit at 7:07 a.m. local time,16 kilometres north-northwest of Kailua Kona, a town on the west coast of Hawaii Island, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center.
There was no risk of a Pacific-wide tsunami, but a possibility of significant wave activity in Hawaii.
“We were rocking and rolling,” said Big (Hawaii) Island resident Anne LaVasseur. “I was pretty scared. We were swaying back and forth, like King Kong’s pushing your house back and forth.”
Power went out across the state, and phone communication was possible but thoroughly restricted.
In the heavy tourist region of Waikiki, visitors lined up to purchase food, water and supplies.
“It’s quite a honeymoon story,” said Karie and Croes waited an hour with her husband to buy bottles of water, chips and bread.
On Hawaii Island a landslide blocked a major highway while boulders fell on roads, rock walls collapsed and televisions were knocked off stands.
Airport service was slowed, but continued despite the outages, though outgoing flights were temporarily restricted due to the inability to properly screen passengers.
