No Current Advisory

The kids were finally in bed, then I get a text from Chris on the other side of the ocean: “earthquake off Mexico. I’m looking for tsunami alerts for you”

“It’s cool, I obsessively plan for tsunamis,” I texted back with a photo of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center (NO CURRENT ADVISORY IN EFFECT), which was pulled up on my phone already thanks to the last three days’ research on historic tsunamis in Hawaii, how much advanced notice we’d have, etc.

Just today while driving across the mountains I thought to myself, “That overpass would be ok during a tsunami. The H3 would be flooded tho. How many cars could camp out along the higher part of the freeway?”

Everybody does this, right? My Houston people? My Hurricane Irma evacuees? But maybe with your own fear, the one that lies barely suppressed beneath the veneer of every day life, the fear that—if it ever happened—you’d have a bizarre moment of clarity and think disjointedly, as the wave/lava/rhinoceros rushed toward you, “Well it’s happening, so at least I can stop worrying about it.” SPLOOSH.

The good news is, the base has put together a handy COLORING BOOK to scare the pants off your kids as you talk together about preparing for starvation and death and resorting to eating Pounce. “HEY KIDS!” It starts cheerily. You can color these depictions of destruction! Stay inside the lines!

But the actual good news is, the Officers Club on base is a safe haven in the event of a tsunami. So at least there will be a bar.

Stay safe, Florida! And Mexico. And Texas. Oh sheesh. It’s a bad year to live near water.