To my daughter on the Oregon Coast - Thanks for calling




Photo by Maria Nelson-Witte
Oregon Coast, Friday, March 11 at about noon

 

By Carolyn Wall

My husband woke me up at 7:30 a.m. with a question.

“Do Maria and Klaus live on the ocean?”

“Yes, on the ocean,” I replied. “Why?”

My husband, the news junkie, gets up early and watches whatever is happening in the world on TV, and on Friday morning he watched the devastation in Japan by an 8.9 earthquake, the strongest ever recorded there.  He also learned that they had experienced a large tsunami and that a tsunami was headed for the entire West Coast of the U.S. and Hawaii.

No need to worry about family in Hawaii. My grandson, who was stationed in Hawaii, is on leave from the Army and is home in Douglas for a couple of weeks before being deployed to Afghanastan (I’ll worry about that another time).

“There’s a tsunami heading for Oregon,” my husband said.

I got up to watch the news. Just five minutes later my daughter, Maria, called from Oregon. She knows how I am. I will worry till I get that phone call.

She and her husband, Klaus live in Florence, Oregon. The sirens had gone off, but they are eight miles from town and did not hear the sirens. They don’t have television, but they do have internet and my daughter always checks her internet first thing in the morning.

She and Klaus just got married recently and she moved to the coast from Eugene. I haven’t met Klaus and haven’t seen the house where they live. I’ve seen beautiful ocean pictures, beautiful sunsets over the ocean pictures, and beautiful pictures of their Doberman peering out over the porch looking at the ocean. I plan to go there in July when we have a family gathering to celebrate their wedding.

But would there be a house to go to?

“We’re up above the ocean – 250 feet,” Maria assured me. “We’re okay. They’re evacuating the low-lying areas and cars are lined up on the look-outs to see the tsunami.”

“Okay,” I said. “Can the tsunami tear away at the cliff and would the house fall off the cliff?"

“Nope, we’re fine,” Maria said. “We live in a place where people have moved in who are engineers and they know it’s safe here. We may be stranded and we’ll just have to live off our Costco stash.”

“Okay,” I said. Then, slipping away from my worried Jewish mother persona back into my role as a journalist, I had to ask just one more thing of her.  “Send me photos of the tsunami,” I said.  "I’ll get them up on the Bugle. I love you. Thanks for calling.”
Postscript: Maria called later Friday afternoon to report that she saw a possible rise in the ocean - maybe eight inches. The roads leading to the coast that had been closed were re-opened. The cars that lined up at the look-outs slowly dispersed. People who were evacuated went back to their homes and businesses. Maria and Klaus wouldn't have to depend on their Costco supply of groceries to get by.
On her Facebook, she had two posts: "Still nothing happening at 7:36."  "Still nothing happening at 8:32"
My son, Eli Sentman, who lives in L.A., wrote on her Facebook: "It is tragic natural events like these that remind us just how vulnerable we are to the whims of Mother Earth. My heart goes out to the Japanese people."