Quotes of the Day

(Updated: Feb. 27, 2010. Just before 6 p.m. eastern time or about 1 p.m. in Hawaii, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled the tsunami alert for the state.)

No one was on the beach in Waikiki at 6 a.m. when the first tsunami warning sirens went off, blaring for 10 minutes — as they would every hour throughout the state. (They went off again at 7 a.m., in case anyone missed it.) By then, news of the massive quake in Chile had already filtered into hotels and homes in the area.

Fire fighters, police and ocean safety officials were going from hotel to hotel to brief tourists of what to do. Keep away from the shore. And evacuate vertically — that is, to higher floors — if the word is given to do so. Public address systems repeated this information constantly on the streets of Waikiki as well as in all hotels in the area.

The first tsunami wave is expected to hit at 11:04 a.m., Hawaii time, at heights estimated from 39 inches to six feet. Through local lore, residents know that the first wave may not be the biggest one. Indeed, because of the island's geography, the waves are expected to wrap around the islands, bouncing from one to the other, after they first make impact.

One resident remembered a minor tsunami from decades ago, how it sucked the water out of a canal and then came back as a six-inch wall of water. "It didn't crest or foam," he recalled, "it was a wall." Locals in Hawaii know which areas to worry about when a tsunami warning goes off. Phonebooks have maps in the front indicating the likeliest inundation zones. Authorities also know which harbors to evacuate. That's why as soon as state officials were notified about the tsunami rippling out from the quake in Chile, ships were evacuated from the harbors in Honolulu, Kahului and Hilo. The airport was also shut down in Hilo, which in recent decades has been hit by not one but two tsunamis. In 1946, a quake in Alaska led to the deaths of nearly 160 people in this city on Hawaii's Big Island. In 1960, an earthquake in Chile sent another cataclysmic wave into Hilo, killing 61.

The last time Hawaii ordered a major evacuation was after an earthquake and tsunami ravaged Russia's Kuril islands, in 1994. The government closed down schools, state and county offices and sent workers home. But nothing ended up happening in Hawaii. This time, however, while the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said that no one was predicting a "worst case scenario," it said that damaging waves are quite likely to occur.

Meanwhile, supermarkets and gas stations were packed this morning in Hawaii, with some lines snaking down the street. People were queued outside a Costco two hours before it was set to open (the store ended up opening early to accommodate them). But despite the lines, there seemed to be more concern and caution than outright fear. "Everyone is small-kine panicking," said one resident, using a local term for "just a little bit."

• TIME Staff / Honolulu