The cancellation of the downgraded tsunami advisory for the state on Wednesday morning capped off a whirlwind 12 hours in which residents hunkered down and evacuated coastlines.
One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded struck off the coast of Russia on Tuesday afternoon Hawaiʻi time, prompting tsunami alerts here in the islands as well as in Japan and on the U.S. West Coast.
In downtown Honolulu, tsunami sirens blared and bumper-to-bumper traffic lined the streets during the tsunami warning — one level up from an advisory.
Soo-min and Addy spoke with The Conversation's Maddie Bender as they were waiting for a bus in Chinatown.
“It's my first one, so it's a little bit frustrating, and it's just, I don't know, I don't know what to prepare,” said Soo-min. “I'm fully moved out of my apartment right now because I'm almost at the end of lease, so I have nothing that I prepared. It's empty. I'm very scared.”
Addy said, “It's actually my last day in Hawaiʻi today, and I have a plane that takes off tomorrow at 7:30 a.m. I hope I get to leave, but my family that's been here for a while, nobody's worried."
"We're in the safe zone, but close enough to like the extreme tsunami evacuation danger zone. But I've been talking to my family about it, nobody cares, and nobody's really worried. So I'm not particularly worried.”
Alaska Airlines suspended its flights to and from Hawaiʻi, and Kahului Airport closed for the night. Normal flight operations have since resumed.
The U.S. Coast Guard also cleared commercial ports to reopen.
Two hours to go before the projected impact of the first tsunami wave on Tuesday, shoppers at a Honolulu Safeway were filling their carts with bottled water, nonperishables, cans of soup, toiletries, and snacks.
HPR spoke with Elena about what was in her cart.
“I’m just getting some essentials,” Elena explained. “I just moved into an apartment, so I'm, like, everything is bare, so I'm just grabbing things that I can put together real quick, like tuna, bread, peanut butter and jelly.”
HPR also spoke with Tanya Scott, who had this to say, “I feel pretty good, because if a tsunami hits here, I want to be in the grocery store, if the tsunami hits real bad, because we got everything we need right here in this grocery store."
"So I'm not in any rush to get back home, because this is a place I want to be if there's a natural disaster.”
This story aired on The Conversation on July 30, 2025. The Conversation airs weekdays at 11 a.m. Hannah Kaʻiulani Coburn adapted this story for the web.
