Kentucky couple describe tsunami evacuation during Hawaii honeymoon: ‘A madhouse’

HAWAII (FOX 56) — A historic 8.8 magnitude earthquake off the east coast of Russia triggered a tsunami impacting Hawaii and portions of the U.S. west coast.

The impacts of the waves sent one Kentucky couple on their honeymoon searching for higher ground.

Ethan and Faith Mulling are Kenton County natives who said they were on a zip-lining excursion when their phones began sounding with tsunami alerts.

“All of our phones started going off doing the warning siren… We left, and it was a madhouse; traffic was terrible, it was crazy,” Ethan said.

The couple said they were unable to make it back to where they were staying to gather their things. Instead, they began to move inland.

“Some of the locals had been warning us that the roads get crazy when warnings like this come in; as we were heading north, the time was just adding and adding. So we decided to flip it around south and find some phone chargers and waters to see us out,” Faith said.

They spent the evening and overnight hours in their car on the side of the road, along with dozens of other cars waiting out the impacts.

“It’s a little difficult here in Kauai because the inland is very mountainous, so there is only so far up you can go. Our lovely Airbnb host also sent us some evacuation plans, some safe zones that we could go to to hold off until that warning died down,” Faith said.

They said they haven’t seen any damage on the island of Kauai, where they are staying, but did hear reports of high water and some minor damage in other areas.

“On Kauai, we’ve been watching the live stream, and it doesn’t look like anything happened here, but we’ve seen on O’ahu that there’s been a lot of flooding and on Maui, a lot of the bays have seen the water retreat,” Ethan said.