That morning I got dressed as usual. I was just leaving for school when I noticed that my shoes were filthy. I went back inside to polish them. Staying home those five extra minutes probably saved my life.

When I came outside again, my mother was on the lawn picking flowers. Somebody yelled “tsunami!” We thought it was an April Fools’ joke. Then I looked up and saw a huge wall of dirty water. Palm trees 35 feet [11 meters] tall were covered by water. My mother pushed me inside and slammed the door, just as the wave struck our house. It felt like we’d been hit by a train.

The wave picked up the house, and we floated away. Seawater came up to my knees. I decided to change clothes, in case we had to swim. When I opened the closet, the back wall was gone! All I could see past my hanging clothes were waves and dead fish. It looked like a strange painting.

Through the windows we could see people floating by, holding onto whatever they could. A boy was clinging to a piece of lumber. The waves carried us far out into Hilo Bay and back again three times.

Finally our house slammed into a factory wall. Somehow my parents and I climbed into the factory, where we found some neighbors on the upper floor. We all got busy tearing burlap sugar bags into strips to make a rope. Whenever someone floated by, we threw them the rope.

Our family was fortunate. And I’m not nervous about tsunamis anymore. But when I got married, I told my husband, “We’re not living at the beach. We’re going to live in the mountains!”

Illustration by Bryn Barnard