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Changing Hawaii
TO paraphrase the immortal words of songwriter Carole King, the residents of western Washington state felt "the earth move under their feet" this week. Wednesday morning's 6.8-magnitude earthquake caused much excitement, major structural damage and minor injuries, but no fatalities. Earthquakes shake
more than groundIn fact, one of the best anecdotes of the day came from former Hawaii Kai resident Marty Wentzel, a travel writer who moved to Seattle a year and a half ago.
When the tremor hit, Wentzel was going into the nurse's office at her daughter's elementary school. "The kids dropped and rolled under their desks," she told the Star-Bulletin in a telephone interview. "It was less than a minute but felt like two...The kids thought it was cool. The adults had a harder time dealing with it."
Can't you just see Marty and the kids crouched under tables, then coming out from cover with a relieved smile and a laugh?
Thus, in the aftermath of the Seattle shaker-upper, the clean-up begins and an appreciative calm descends. Everyone continues to ask each other, "So where were you when the Big One hit?"
Such joviality is not the case in the still-suffering western Indian state of Gujarat. On Jan. 26, a 7.7-magnitude earthquake killed more than 17,000 people and left millions homeless. The death toll is expected to reach 30,000 once all of the rubble is cleared.
THOSE lucky enough to be alive are in mourning, suffering from injuries or sickness, or are wandering around in a continued state of trauma.
Life is so bleak there that Honolulu resident Indru Watumull sent me a Jan. 29 New York Times clipping of a dispatch by Pamela Constable of the Washington Post Foreign Service. Her impressions of earthquake-ravaged India moved Watumull to tears.
An excerpt: "In Bhuj, I (saw) the horribly distorted faces of earthquake victims pulled dead from mountains of rubble, children's limp hands and feet protruding from piles of debris, and hundreds of moaning survivors lying on stretchers in dusty fields, their broken arms and legs swathed in casts as relatives hovered worriedly.
"The episode in Bhuj that would not leave my mind, however, was one of mingled hope and horror. An army major had guided me down into a hole surrounded by dangling slabs of cement, showing me where he and his crew had spent 48 hours digging toward a teenage boy who was calling intermittently for help.
"At the bottom of the ruins was a tiny space, no bigger than an animal's burrow, where they had finally found the lad and dragged him out, barely alive. The major, who had just spent two years fighting Muslim guerrillas in Kashmir, confided that rescuing this boy was the proudest moment of his military career."
WHAT can Hawaii residents do to help the earthquake victims in India? Contributions may be sent to the Hawaii Chapter of the American Red Cross and earmarked for the India Earthquake Relief Fund. Watumull suggests donations to CARE, an Atlanta-based aid agency doing much work in Bhuj (for more information, go to http://www.care.org on the Web).
Or, if you're in the mood for a vegetarian feast on Sunday, the ISKCON Hawaii Cultural Center at 51 Coelho Way is holding a fund-raising dinner starting at 6 p.m. A minimum $10-per-person donation will help those in India who, unlike those in Washington state, have experienced the shaking of the earth, and will never get over it.
Diane Yukihiro Chang's column runs Monday and Friday.
She can be reached by phone at 525-8607, via e-mail at
dchang@starbulletin.com, or by fax at 523-7863.