The Hilo Tidal Wave, May 23, 1960
StoryIllustrationHistorical Account★★★★In Hilo, Hawaii, sirens began to shriek in the night. A tidal wave was headed toward Hawaii at 450 mph. Hilo residents had three hours and fifteen minutes to evacuate. But Hilo had been through many tidal-wave alerts.
Usually nothing happened. Some moved to higher ground. Some didn’t bother. An eyewitness reported that some people actually went to the beach to get a first hand look at the large waves.
Suddenly the sirens stopped. All was quiet. It was like a death hush. Then came a rumbling like the roll of a distant drum.
It was almost inaudible at first, then it grew louder. Then with a fierce rumbling and force impossible to describe, it was there, a wall of water thirty feet high and moving with the speed of a jet.
The screams of anguish were drowned in the deafening roar. Then it was quiet again, that awful silence again.
In the morning, seventy-eight bodies were discovered among the ruins, seventy-eight people who didn’t need to die. They knew! They heard the sirens. They understood the risk.
They just didn’t bother to do anything about it.
The point
Many Hilo residents heard and understood the 1960 tsunami warning sirens but failed to act, and seventy-eight of them died as a result.