At 7:07 a.m. Sunday on Maui in Hawaii, we were jolted in bed by an earthquake that they’re now saying it had a magnitude of 6.6. After it continued for several moments, I jumped up and ran to the archway door frame leading out of our bedroom and John grabbed the swaying big screen TV perched on its stand. In a few moments it stopped and we realized we had no power.

We used to live in California, so we’re earthquake veterans. But this is the first quake we’ve ever experienced in Hawaii. This one shook us more violently, I think, than the California quakes which we experienced, which seem to have a more rolling impact. This one was located off the coast of the big island, near Kona and there were no reports of any tsunami (high wave) warnings. It was probably connected to the volcano there.

We realized that we had water and our phone system was still working. But with our power out, we new we had only about 15 to 20 minutes before our phone system battery ran out of juice and we lost telephone service. One of our first concerns was to know what happened, because we get our news from the Internet and don’t have any small radios. We were also concerned because we have two weddings today.

Our Maui Weddings telephone rang, and John answered it. It was a first time caller from the mainland asking for some information about a possible upcoming wedding. Right as John was talking to the caller, a second aftershock hit us. He told the caller what was happening; you could clearly hear everything rattling and we later found out that the second tremor was also reputed to be over 5 in magnitude, but it didn’t last as long. Knowing the phone was going to go dead, John took the bride’s name and number so that we could call her back later.

I went to church, which went on as usual despite the power outage. It seemed that all of Hawaii was hit with power outages, and some injuries but no reported fatalities. We were essentially back to normal very quickly, in about 4 hours. We actually went off and did two weddings Sunday afternoon.

The first wedding was a young couple from Oklahoma, if I remember right. They were really sweet. I’ve put a photo of Robert and Kim in this blog article so that you can see them for yourself. They had a great Maui beach wedding.

Earthquakes let you know WHO is in control (and it isn’t us ;>). But fortunately, in Hawaii we have so few natural issues (compared with everywhere else on planet earth) that we’re glad to be out here in the Pacific away from so much of the crazy things going on in the rest of the world. If you have an upcoming Maui weddings, don’t fear, we’ll still be here for you! Ready to tie the knot and get your new life started with a bang!