Mother Nature can be ruthless.
That was made clear when some massive, rogue waves crashed onto the Marshall Islands this past week. Videos from the event have been terrifying to see, with buildings being completely overtaken by the rush of ocean waves pounding into the island’s structures.
The Marshall Islands are a chain of islands located in the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the Philippines. A United States military base is located on one of the five islands (Roi-Namur), and it was there where this horrifying video was taken.
Somehow, everyone involved in this footage was unharmed, which is a miracle if you ask me. The rushing water came in seemingly without warning, and as you’ll see in the clip below, it was powerful enough to completely decimate a pair of doors leading into a restaurant area in the base.
There were many news outlets that reported a tsunami had hit the small collection of Pacific islands, but those reports have since been debunked. As the owner of this video shares in the caption of the post, the strong waves were a result of a number of different things all lining up to create the “perfect storm,” if you will:
“Roi Namur island was hit hard by several huge waves Saturday night. It was NOT a tsunami as many other sites that stole my video are saying. No other islands were affected.
It was a combination of wind, tides and swell direction. It also was right after low tide at a 1.2ft tide so could have been worse. Very very thankful no one was seriously injured.”
That’s absolutely terrifying…
When the lights went out as water continued to rush in, that basically turned the situation into a living nightmare (if it wasn’t already). Again, it’s almost unbelievable that no one was seriously injured in these events, especially those that were standing on the other side of the doors just before the violent waves busted right through them.
With many portions of the island underwater, the U.S. Army announced that all “non-mission personnel” that were staying at the base in the Marshall Islands were evacuated from the premises. The recovery effort for Roi-Namur (coined Operation Roi Recovery) is expected to take months.
