From the Santa Monica Bay to Hawaii and beyond, coastal residents had their day upended by a faraway, massive earthquake in Russia that brought tsunami alerts to a wide swath of the Pacific.
Tsunami waves were expected to hit Hawaii and, later, the California coast. Southern California is expected to see only modest waves, but far-northern California could see larger ones.
Dockweiler State Beach
At Dockweiler, Aaron Travis and Maris Vellavura, two Aussies who were visiting California for a work trip, had been unaware of the tsunami advisory as they hung out.
Strolling alongside the beach, they said they were enjoying the final days of a U.S. trip that had lasted for a couple of weeks.
They were surprised but not worried.
“It would have been nice to know about it,” Travis said, laughing. “It isn’t too bad really. Like, you never know how big they’re going to be, whether it’s a fail or not.”
Connor Cunningham said he left his phone at home but began to regret that after learning of the advisory. A Playa Vista local, he pondered the possibilities.
“Like, do I even have a plan? Like, what if this happened?” he said. “Playa Vista is a little bit low. If I was up the hills, I wouldn’t really be thinking about it, but like, maybe I should plan.”
Bianca and Josue Mendez, siblings, and their friend Miguel Silva were walking and biking alongside the sand. Bianca was on a visit from Nebraska to visit her brother, and thought visiting the beach could be fun.
She was sorely disappointed when those the advisory threatened to put a crimp in those plans.
“I asked AI, like, ‘is it OK to go to the beach?’” Bianca said.
The three were surprised at the amount of undisturbed beachgoers.
“I don’t think it’s stopping anyone,” Josue said.
Crescent City
In Crescent City, a remote Northern California harbor town where tsunamis are a way of life, the Tuesday evening barflies gathered at Port O’Pints Brewing Co. were decidedly blasé about the possibility of impending disaster.
The TVs on the wall were still playing the Giants game and the CBS sitcom “Young Sheldon” instead of CNN or local news. And the roughly two dozen patrons were drinking and relaxing, though plenty were looking at their phones.
“People really don’t start doing much until you hear the sirens. Right now, most people are just hanging out, waiting to see if it progresses. And if it progresses, you gotta go, go go,” said bartender and Crescent City native Jacob Swift.
This was far from his first tsunami-alert rodeo.
When the tsunami advisory in the region was upgraded to a tsunami warning, patrons commented on it, then returned to their business, Swift said.
“We get these fairly often. Often enough to where nobody’s really panicking right now,” Swift added.
Port O’Pints owner John Kirk picked up the phone and noted that despite being a ways from the rugged coastline, the bar was technically in the flood zone.
Kirk, who works by day delivering babies as the county’s only OB-GYN, said he wasn’t drinking that night because he was on call.
The vibe in his Irish brewpub remained fairly chill, he added.
“If the water starts rolling up on us, well, somebody will probably run,” he noted drily.
Redondo Beach
Manny Jimenez has worked at Old Tony’s, a classic bar and seafood restaurant on the Redondo Beach Pier, for 42 years.
Featuring souvenir mai tai glasses and faded photos of celebrities on its walls, the old-fashioned watering hole was built over the Pacific Ocean in 1952.
Jimenez, 65, is now bar manager at Old Tony’s, where he was at about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. He told The Times that he had never heard of a tsunami damaging businesses on the pier.
“Big waves, yes, but not tsunamis,” he said, noting that “15-, 20-foot waves” occasionally would cause some damage before the pier was rebuilt following a catastrophic fire on May 27, 1988.
Jimenez said the laid-back nightspot would not be taking any extra precautions due to the looming tsunami and would close at midnight as usual.
“Anything can happen. You never know. It’s Mother Nature,” he said as he gathered empty glasses patrons had left on the bar.
“But I’m confident we’ll be fine.”
Long Beach
The approaching tsunami was the topic of discussion outside the entrance of the Queen Mary, the iconic ship that has been docked in the Port of Long Beach since 1967.
“You got three hours until the tsunami hits,” a man told his friends outside the entrance as they prepared to leave.
“We better get out of here then,” a woman responded.
Nearby, Madison Aguilera, 21, and her two friends, Azalia Ortiz, 23, and Omar Mora, 20, stood outside the ship.
The trio were driving from Pico Rivera on the 710 Freeway to Long Beach when they got an alert about a tsunami. They said that, because the earthquake had occurred in Russia and the tsunami would likely not be very strong in Southern California, they decided to keep heading to the ship.
“My mom was saying, ‘Why are you going over there?’” Aguilera said. “I didn’t think it would affect us.”
The three friends said they wanted to see the ship up close. They also wanted to see it from the inside because it was haunted.
As Gloria Rodriguez, 57, waited in the parking lot for her partner and daughter to finish a tour that focused on the ghostly legends of the Queen Mary, the Sacramento resident was checking on family in San Francisco.
“I’m sure they’re going to be fine,” she said.
She said her relatives live near the water but that, because the tsunami had been all over the news, she was sure they were on top of it.
“They told us what time it’s going to hit,” Rodriguez said. But she didn’t think a possible tsunami was as big deal in Long Beach. “It’s only going to be a foot,” she said.
Hawaii
Nearly two years to the day after the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century decimated Lahaina, residents of the historic Hawaiian town once again found themselves bracing for nature’s wrath.”Right now, we’re traumatized,” said Dominga Advincula, a longtime resident of the foothill neighborhood where the Lahaina blaze ignited.
“Every hour, they make the sound of sirens for everybody to leave the ocean and it makes us traumatized again for what happened in 2023.”
Advincula’s hillside home survived the 2023 fire, and it was where she and her family were gathered early Tuesday evening: Given the elevation, she hoped it would remain a safe shelter.
She’d been sent home from her job at a Kaanapali hotel after the warnings blared. Nearby roads were crowded with people trying to get to higher ground, she said.
But she was optimistic that the worst would not come to pass.
“Hopefully, nothing will happen because everyone is aware this time,” she said, in a reference to the 2023 blaze, when the island’s sirens never rang, and many lacked sufficient warning of the flames. “And its broad daylight.”
