Honolulu Lite Charles Memminger

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Earthquake rattled our preparedness

Nothing like a couple of earthquakes to put certain facts of life in exquisite detail, like you can have the best electric power generator in the world, but it isn't going to work if you don't have any gasoline.

I don't have the best generator in the world, but I've got a pretty good one, a big yellow bugger capable of running a moderate-size amusement park. It has been generally credited with ending the 40 days of rain we had last winter in Hawaii. The rain seemed like it'd never stop, even after a number of flash floods and landslides (including the one that nearly flattened my house). We were running sump pumps day and night to keep the house from being washed away, and they were doing great.

Then I had an epiphany. (An epiphany is a sort of spiritual sudden understanding of something, like when you drop a large, heavy object you are carrying -- such as a refrigerator or a piano -- and have the sudden understanding that it is going to land on your foot and hurt like bloody hell.)

My epiphany during the pouring rain, while my sump pumps were bravely pumping water away from the house like the heroic little soldiers they were, was that if the power went out, as it is apt to do in Hawaii with annoying regularity, my house would either mimic that fine craft constructed by Noah and depart for higher ground, or fill up like an aquarium.

I raced around to hardware stores and home-supply outlets trying to find a generator, but apparently a lot of people were having the same epiphany -- it was a mass epiphany, if you will -- and most of the generators had been scooped up. I finally found one in an auto parts store and bought it at a bargain-basement price (if your bargain basement has only one generator left) of several hundred dollars and installed it in my garage ready for anything God, nature or the Hawaiian Electric Co. could throw at me. That's when my epiphany morphed into a miracle, actually two miracles.

The first miracle was that the rain suddenly stopped, the clouds parted, sunshine splashed its happy countenance across the islands while birds sang and vestal virgins (the best kind) held hands and danced in the meadows. The simple purchase of a generator capable of running a moderate-size amusement park was all it took to convince Thor and the other gods and demigods of inclement weather to withdraw.

The second miracle was that my brand-new generator suddenly morphed into a coffee table. That's because it suddenly was the most expensive household item on the premises, and there was no way I was going to leave it out in the garage to rust and sulk. I moved it into the house, put a nice piece of plywood on it and began to consider it as a very expensive, though ugly, kind of table.

So, peace, order and acceptable amounts of moisture were restored to the realm thanks to my generator, which technically was a vestal virgin, never having been called to duty.

And all was well until last week when I was sitting where I am now, my fingers dancing across this exact computer keyboard when the world began to rumble and shake. Forget what the authorities say about the duration of the initial earthquake being 15 to 30 seconds. I was there. It went on for a good 45 minutes, during which visions of apocalypse, falling soufflés, collapsed sand castles, frightened vestal virgins and a concerned stare by my dog Boomer raced through my mind.

With the grace, dignity and stoicism of a deranged chicken, I ran around on the driveway, calmly alerting my neighbors that the sky was falling. Then the power went off. I regained what little composure I had lost, turned on my truck radio and learned that the entire state had no electricity and that would apparently be the case for days to come. Worried? Not I. For I had a generator capable of running a moderate-size amusement park. I would be keeping my frozen foods frozen, zapping popcorn in the microwave and watching DVDs on the TV while my unfortunate generator-less neighbors suffered. I pitied them for their lack of epiphanies.

It was about then I realized I had no gasoline to actually run my generator and that all the gas stations on the island were unable to pump gas without power. After shaking my fist at the heavens, I met up with some friends who also had generators with no gas, and we helped each other siphon gas out of each other's vehicles.

Once we all had enough gas to assure our pork chops would never thaw, we sat back with a few beers and toasted our farsightedness. Shortly thereafter, power was restored, gas became plentiful and my still-vestal virgin generator reverted to its role as a piece of household furniture.

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