It’s daytime, around 5pm or so on a summer night, Me and a bunch of people are having a ‘hurricane party’ in a dining room at this hotel on the oceanfront.. We figure we never get the worst of them, so we might as well enjoy the stormy scenery...Most of the night we spend watching the hotel lights shining down as surf crash against the breaker wall, spraying water 3 to 5 stories in the air… The night wears on and I’m there with my girlfriend.. We start to get a little close and personal, kissing and dancing.. as we’re dancing, I gaze over her shoulder to se the crashing waves.. but I don’t see any.. I keep staring, but I can’t make out the water at all.. No whitecaps, nothing… I pause and walk over to the glass and cup my eyes as I stare out into the barly lit dark… The wind is shaking the glass as I stare out.. I can’t make out anything really, but I get a bad feeling.. I wait a few more seconds and turn to my girl.. she has a smile on her face as I grab her hand and start looking for my friends… I see Paul and tell him that we have to go upstairs, like now.. So we bolt for the elevator.. We get in the elevator and my girlfriend mentions something about not being into a three way.. I brush off her comment as I hit the 8 button, the floor that we’re staying on… Paul asks me what’s up… I mention the fact that I didn’t see any water when I looked at the beach.. He replies back with a are you sure? By about this time, we’re already passing the 4th floor… I lean back against the wall and rest my head for a mere second and then the wave hits the building… The elevator is slammed against the wall in the shaft.. a sound unlike anything.. a whistling sound, but unique. Water rains down from the ceiling of the elevator as the lights flicker.. The elevator stops for a second and water floods the floor, about two feet worth.. up to our ankles.. the whistle sound comes back but more of a reversed nature, like a vacuum.. the elevator shudders back to life and keeps traveling… the door opens on the 8th floor.. A rush of water enters the elevator as the doors slowly open… about up to our knee’s… wind is howling down the hallway as we realize that all the doors have been blown off their hinges and all the windows have been busted out by the force… Cushions for couches, float into the hallway, as with personal effects.. I remember a teddy bear floating out into the hallway and then get sucked back into the room as the water is cascading back out of the hotel.. We look into one of the rooms to see the water draining and pulling broken furniture, shower-stalls, Televisions and the likes out the shattered frame that was a balcony and sliding glass door… We wait until the water has finished draining from the hallway and we walk down to the south end of the hotel and look out the side window to see the damage to the strip…
Devastated… Like when you see those video’s of carnage… the strip of hotels took most of the brunt.. but you can see where the spaces in between the hotels let the wave run up in shore.. All the hotels were destroyed from the 7’th floor down… A huge supertanker is propped up stuck into a hotel about 4 blocks north of us, flipped over… burning. As is a navy cruiser.. It’s been thrown into two hotels and they collapsed on top of the gray hunk of steel just two blocks north of us…
No windows, no life.. nothing… just gaping holes in buildings draining water.. the one’s that were 1 or two story are gone… just floating debris sticking out in random places… the water is still flowing into the city.. and I tell them, You know what happens when a wave comes in, right? We’ve got to get to the roof…fast… We find the stairwell by the elevator and run up the to top floor, the 12th.. We climb the ladder up to the roof and open the flip top door.. now I get a better view of the devastation… It’s tremendous. Just a huge widespread panorama of destruction… I can’t see the wave anymore.. just like looking over an ocean.. you can see the tops of tree’s and any building over 4 stories… and debris everywhere.. cars, bodies, huge propane tanks… then I see the ripple I was expecting.. It’s slow moving at first on the horizon… but I know it’s got some speed to it.. I tell them to brace themselves, but they are ahead of me….the recoil of the wave is probably 7 stories tall… I can see a large building, a newly made one (about 15 stories) off in the horizon, it’s about 10 miles inland and I can just make out the wave hitting it for the second time and can watch it sway with the way… but it’s not really swaying... It’s falling over… I see it disappear behind the backs-well. I grit my teeth as I hear the rushing sound approach.. I can feel the building shudder as the force of the water envelopes it once again… I can feel dull thuds as scrapple impacts the building.. I pray out loud… A huge rush of air launches the roof of the elevator shaft into the air, we’re covered with shrapnel and pieces of insulation as we stand up and look out over the ocean…

09/22/2003

Posted on 09/22/2003
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