Aggies shaken but OK

Most of the Utah State women's soccer team expected a wake-up call from the hotel in which they were staying Sunday morning in Honolulu, but it proved to be something well beyond the normal telephone call.

The Aggies, who were in Hawaii for a match with the University of Hawaii, were jarred awake by the 6.6 earthquake that hit the Islands at 7:07 a.m. — the largest quake to hit the area in two decades.

"Most of the girls were in bed. I think only one or two were up because of the time difference," Utah State coach Heather Cairns said. "It woke us all up ... We were on the eighth floor so we shook pretty good."

Most of the team, including Carins, hadn't experienced an earthquake before Sunday.

"People were definitely nervous because we didn't know what was happening. You talk to the people around here and even the locals hadn't experienced anything like that, so we had people coming up to our floor telling us to stay calm and to stay in our rooms" she said.

Moments later came a small aftershock.

"After that was over everyone decided to come out of their rooms and go downstairs and explore things."

The game, originally scheduled for Sunday, was reschedule to Monday evening, with the game ending after the Deseret Morning News deadline.

The team stayed in a hotel near Waikiki beach that was able to provide its guests cold-cut sandwiches and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but not much else.

Cairns said the authorities had the road closed to auto traffic, so the team members spent most of the time in their rooms recovering from the long flight and the physical game Friday night at San Jose State — or at the beach.

"We couldn't practice, so we made the best of it," she said.

Part of the island had power and the Aggies traveled to Pearl City, some 30 minutes from where they were staying, for pizza at Chuck E. Cheese.

"It was an excursion," she said.

By midnight, most everything was operational, including the power to most of the island.

"You can still see policemen in some of the intersections to move things along, but everything else is pretty much back to normal," Cairns said of activity Monday morning.

The quake hit 10 miles north-northwest of Kailua-Kona, a town on the west coast of Hawaii Island, also known as the Big Island, said Don Blakeman of the National Earthquake Information Center, part of the U.S. Geological Survey.

The Pacific Tsunami Center reported a preliminary magnitude of 6.5, while the U.S. Geological Survey gave a preliminary magnitude of 6.6.

The earthquake was followed by several strong aftershocks, including one measuring a magnitude of 5.8, the Geological Survey said.

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E-mail: jhinton@desnews.com

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Contributing Associated Press