AS THOUSANDS perished in the wake of the wall of black water that swamped Japan two weeks ago, seven young men and women sat in the pitch-black night on a tiny Hawaiian island with nothing but a couple of life rafts and their wits.
The sound of the approaching tsunami that swept across the Pacific on March 11 will stay with them forever.
''All-encompassing, surrounding, deep rumbling,'' a US Fish and Wildlife Service volunteer, Emily Cook, said. ''So loud. You know it's the water, but until you've heard water act that way …'' Her voice faltered. ''It was terrifying.''
Ms Cook was one of seven volunteers and workers on the low-lying north-western Laysan island of Hawaii two weeks ago when the tsunami roared across the Pacific towards America's west coast.
The last contact they had with other human beings was in September last year when a ship passed through to make repairs to the island's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration camp.
On the night the waves crashed through, the four women and three men - who live for months at a time in tent camps with small amounts of solar power - were given a few hours' notice.
Satellite phones were packed into watertight containers, food and water rations were stowed and two life boats were prepared for the inundation across the windswept, sandy soil.
''We still weren't really aware of how serious [it was],'' an NOAA worker, Artie Wong, said. ''Then around 2.30 in the morning, we could hear the rumbling.
''It came within two feet of the Fish and Wildlife camp. I was definitely scared for my life.
''It was so dark at night. We couldn't see what was happening; we could mostly hear things.''
Laysan, more than 1700 kilometres from Honolulu, is about 1.5km wide and 3.2km long. At its highest point, it is only about 12 metres above sea level.
Surrounded by a huge shallow-water coral reef system, it attracts millions of birds, sustains a mass of unique plant life, and acts as a breeding ground for Hawaiian monk seals.
But the vegetation was flattened on the night of March 11 and, as Mr Wong and Ms Cook huddled in their life rafts with the swell just metres away, the waves dumped all manner of debris on the fragile island ecosystem. ''The next morning when the sun came up, it was just an unbelievable amount of destruction,'' Mr Wong said.
Low-lying vegetation was all but wiped out, he said.
The Laysan survivors - aged between 23 and 33 - are now back in Honolulu trying to come to terms with the frightening end to their tropical isolation.
Ms Cook did not know whether she would ever return. ''Maybe,'' she said. ''It was very intense.''
Yesterday officials estimated the state of Hawaii sustained at least $US30 million damage.
