I’ll start with the good news. The entire crew has been successfully evacuated from Tern Island and have made it back to the main islands. From what we hear, it was a challenging on-load at the island, with one trip between the ship and the Tern dock taking nearly an hour in the small boats. It was also a particularly rocky boat ride back to Honolulu, with the boat pounding into 30+ knot winds and 12-14′ swells. If you’ve ever been on the Kahana before, you know that this can be a miserable experience. The Kahana’s a freighter; it’s not particularly “optimized” for passengers. But they all survived and most of them were home with their friends and family in time for Christmas.
The Tern Crew, moments after they stepped off the Kahana. From left to right: Olivia Bailey (med-evaced earlier this fall), Morgan Gilmour, Abram Fleishman, Mike Johns, Larry Chlebeck, and Chad Bell (photo by USFWS)
Now the bad news. With the exception of one building and some water tanks, the entire field station (barracks, boathouses, and storage sheds) is destroyed beyond repair. Of course this is a huge, huge loss for the program, but do take note that all of these lost structures were already in such poor condition before the storm that they were beyond repair. And they had been in that condition for many years, but that just the way things are for Tern. We’ve been in “eek out another year” mode for many, many years out there. We’re not sure why the condition of our facilities out there never seemed to merit the attention it absolutely screamed for, but that’s the way it was.
Unfortunately, when high winds strike buildings that are decades past the end of their reasonable life, the end result is not pretty. To be sure, the microburst that struck Tern Island was a rare weather event. It’s entirely possible that even the sturdiest, best-maintained buildings would have been demolished by the storm, but what you’ll see in the following photographs and journal accounts is what happens when a severe storm meets an already dilapidated facility. The lives of staff and volunteers were seriously threatened. Hundreds of seabirds were killed by flying wall panels, roofs, and other debris that hurtled through the air at high speeds. What remains of the destroyed buildings will likely continue to entrap and harm wildlife. It’s grim, folks. Really, really grim.
A Laysan albatross crushed by a wall panel and bookshelf that were blown from the building. (Photo by Abram Fleishman)
Through it all, the crew of FWS volunteers (Abram Fleishman, Morgan Gilmour, Larry Chlebeck, and Mike Johns) and their leader, Tern Co-Manager Chad Bell remained upbeat and worked harder than ever. After fleeing to the North wing of the barracks, a moderately safer place to wait out the storm, they began assembling emergency supplies, repairing broken water pipes, restoring downed communications antennas, and closing off the severely damaged section of the barracks from the less compromised portion of the building. During all this, a severe thunderstorm raged on outside, dropping temperatures, dumping buckets of rain, sending bolts of lightning to the ground, and being all-around quite scary. Once the storm passed several days later, the crew was finally able to truly assess the damage to the facilities, the wildlife, and the habitat. They worked dawn until dusk cleaning up debris, salvaging equipment and data, and moving gear into warehouse, the only stable building left on the island (before and after the storm).
But enough of what I have to say about it. First read Mike John’s excellent journal of the storm. Mike was up early the morning of the storm taking photos of the lightning and checking email. And thank goodness he was. As you’ll see in the photo album, if Mike had been in his bedroom, he probably would not be with us today. Mike’s journal of the storm provides vivid detail of what it was like to be in the barracks during the storm and the hours after. Next, take a look at Abram Fleishman’s photo album of the damage to further grasp what it must have been like to have been there through it all.
Thanks again to this crew for your amazing, tireless work on behalf of the wildlife and the program on Tern. Additional thanks to Abram and Mike for sharing their photos and writings with me.
Click here to be taken to Mike’s blog entry about the storm.
And here are some of Abram’s photos (with captions by Meg) from the storm and aftermath. Click on any photo to scroll through the entire gallery. (Warning: The album does contain a few shots of dead and injured seabirds. If you are uncomfortable with this, proceed with caution.)
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- A Laysan albatross who survived the storm, its plumage discolored by the clouds of dirt and grime that the storm generated.
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- What was left of the boathouse. Note, this building used to have a roof…
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- A wall of debris and downed wall panels in what was formerly three separate bedrooms. If we had taken on those surplus Laysan volunteers earlier in the fall, they would have been sleeping in these rooms. Given the wind velocity, the force of the storm, and the deplorable state of our living facility, anybody sleeping in these rooms would have been seriously injured or killed. It’s a good thing none of the Laysan volunteers wanted to come to Tern this fall.
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- A black-footed albatross crushed by flying debris from USFWS buildings. The orange goop is solidified stomach oil, a nutrient-rich soup that adults feed themselves and their chicks with.
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- A field of dead and dying black-footed albatrosses. For a moment, imagine yourself as a Tern volunteer. You just survived a near-death experience on a remote island. The storm rages on and you don’t have any place safe to go if another microburst hits. You’re exhausted, scared….and then you step outside only to be surrounded by hundreds of dead and dying seabirds. It was grim, folks. I am seriously awed by the ability of this crew to not only cope with this situation, but to work tirelessly on behalf of the wildlife to clean up and contain the debris before they evacuated.
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- Another shot of the boathouse. It’s not exactly a shocker that this building didn’t survive the storm. The studs, roof beams, and other structural components were so termite-eaten that the lumber had the consistency of a sponge. So yeah, when a wind storm hits a building that’s only being held up by plywood, this is what happens. It’s just a shame that Tern’s facilities were allowed to deteriorate this far. Human and wildlife safety were jeopardized by this neglect.
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- A very lucky Laysan albatross. Three feet to the left and this poor gal would’ve been crushed by the boathouse wall that was launched a good 15 feet. Hopefully its mate survived the storm, too and the chick doesn’t get entrapped in our debris.
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- Some boathouse walls that destroyed one of the best remaining shrubs on Tern. Tern is very, very limited in its shrub habitat, so any loss of shrubs is a big deal. This was one of the more robust individuals. This Tournefortia shrub, destroyed now, supported about 50 black noddy nests, a dozen or so red-footed booby nests, and a small handful of white terns.
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- Fuel tanks became airborne and landed up in the antenna of a weather station. (Fortunately the tanks were empty)
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- Black-footed albatrosses in the wrong place at the wrong time. UC researcher and FWS volunteer Morgan Gilmour surveys for injured birds in the background.
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- This is the courtyard of the barracks. Wall panels were blown in from all south facing bedrooms. Some of the panels flew all the way through the barracks and into the courtyard. We are unbelievably, amazingly, incredibly lucky that nobody got decapitated by these things.
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- This used to be a hallway connecting the south and north wing of the barracks.
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- The barracks common room. (There used to be wall there).
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- Common room walls and windows blown onto the habitat adjacent to the catchment pad. About 8 dead Laysan albatrosses are probably somewhere underneath that debris.
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- Mud spattered onto one of the kitchen murals
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- South wing hallway. This is the part of the building where all the volunteer and staff bedrooms are.
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- Barracks common room. It used to have walls…
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- Morgan manages a smile despite another impending storm (check out those clouds! You do not want to be relying on Tern’s “infrastructure” when you see clouds like that)
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- This sweetie managed to find its egg again after it was blown out of the nest! (sadly the egg is broken)
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- Laysan albatross killed by flying debris.
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- North wing of the barracks–this was the “safe” part of the building that the crew fled to after the south wing was completely destroyed.
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- Seriously ominous looking clouds. Apparently the sky did this shortly after the microburst/tornado hit the station. The crew also reports that the temperature suddenly dropped 15 degrees at this time these clouds developed. Terrifying.
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- View of the storm from the warehouse.
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- Heavy, heavy rains.
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- Common room window. Shards of glass flying around a remote island with volunteers and nesting seabirds=not good.
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- Another shot of the common room
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- This used to the be library/radio room/office. That’s the desk that Mike John’s survived the storm under. We find it a bit sad that a WWII era steel desk is better shelter than a barracks bedroom.
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- Common room during the early clean-up stages.
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- Abram’s bedroom. Looks okay on first glance, but check out that right side wall. The entire wall is pushed about 3 feet into the room.
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- This was volunteer Mike Johns’s room. If Mike hadn’t randomly happened to wake up early to do emails on the morning of the storm, he would have been in this room and at best, seriously injured.
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- The old biology supply room. Missing it’s entire north wall.
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- The SW bathroom just got a little breezier….
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- Wall panels and building debris in the courtyard area of the barracks.
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- Southwest section of the barracks. It’s a darn good thing those Laysan volunteers didn’t end up working on Tern this fall. They would have bee sleeping in these rooms and would not have fared well.
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- More debris. This is out in the front of the barracks.
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- The common room viewed from the catchment pad (form Coast Guard tennis court).
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- We don’t normally keep out fuel storage pods on the former runway. The wind deposited them there.
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- Many of the masked and red-footed boobies returned to the island during the storm to wait out the high winds and rough waters.
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- A Laysan albatross hunkers down on its egg through the extreme weather. These birds are built for weather like this and though it’s probably not nice for them, they can handle wind and rain, no problem. It’s when they happen to be nesting in the vicinity of facilities with a multi-decade backlog of deferred maintenance that we have issues.
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- A soaked and sad-looking Great Frigatebird
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- Laysan albatross among what’s left of the station’s library.
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- Common room (sans walls)
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- Another shot of the common room.
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- The courtyard debris field
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- Missing and damaged solar panels
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- Solar panel shattered by flying debris
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- This was Tern’s biggest and best shrub. It supported hundreds of nests of four different species. This is a major loss on Tern where literally every single shrub counts.
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- Another shot of the shrub. Some of us called this particular Tournefortia bush the “Tree of Life”
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- This is the SW end of the barracks. The outer walls blew in and all the way through the back wall of the building, taking out the north facing walls, as well.
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- Inner barracks.
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- Another damaged solar panel
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- Volunteer Mike Johns begins cleaning up debris and recovering equipment from the boathouse.
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- Flattened boathouse
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- And roofless boathouse
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- This is the tractor shed. Those coils of rope on the ground were blown here from the boathouse (about 40 feet from here). The large holes in the concrete were caused by flying debris. The long vertical cracks have been in there for years.
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- SW end of the barracks. This used to the NMFS office, but because this section of the building was condemned last March, we relocated the seal crew’s office to the north wing of the barracks. Good thing we did that, otherwise there would have been a lot more debris to clean up and loss of equipment.
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- A couple south side walls that somehow weren’t blown in.
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- Volunteer bedroom.
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- Common room from outside
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- Debris from the common room strewn across the habitat.
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- This used to be the weather station.
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- Former Manager’s office, now a bedroom.
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- Another makeshift bed on the north side of the barracks.
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- This was the frame that mounted the solar panels to the roof. It was ripped loose and now the barracks roof leaks even worse than it already did. (It leaked quite severely for many years)
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- Brown noddy crushed under the solar panel mounting framework.
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- Fortunately the tractor didn’t get crushed or compromised during the storm. It was absolutely instrumental in the clean-up effort.
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- A Laysan albatross crushed by a wall panel and bookshelf that were blown from the building. (Photo by Abram Fleishman)
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- The inside of the common room after extensive clean-up and close-off efforts. The crew worked their tails off to clean up the mess and did great work boarding up this part of the building.
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- Dining area of the common room. The kitchen and rest of the north wing is now closed off from open common room and south wing.
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- That rust didn’t appear suddenly. The wall panels had been greatly compromised for some time and were a source of major concern for field staff.
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- Amazing construction work by the crew after storm.
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- Old DC battery room.
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- SW end of barracks. Walls dividing an old lab space and several volunteer bedrooms have collapsed.
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- White terns returning to the vicinity of their former nest site.
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- This plucky little white tern chick miraculously survived the storm. Hopefully its parents did, too.
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- These are all the bands that were recovered from birds killed by our buildings. They don’t represent all the 240 birds killed, just the banded individuals.
What a terrible disaster! What an incredibly hard-working crew of Ternites, to carry on and take care of things as best they could before being evacuated; thank you!
I’m so glad everyone is alright. That is terrifying. I’ve spent some time on Tern and cannot imagine what you all experienced. I know your hearts broke for the birds. Mine has too.
With any good fortune, this horrific event could become a blessing. If the valuable done on Tern is given its due – and hopefully with a sympathetic public wanting to help, funding might be gained to go clean up the rest of the debris and have a new facility built in its place.
A lot to hope for, I know, but get your story out there! I can imagine many people joining together with donations – and perhaps a corporation or two as well – to get this done!
Good you’re all safe. I love that place. WIth Aloha from Patrick Ching
My heart breaks for the wildlife, so glad the crew was okay though I know must have been quite an experience for them. Thank you all for your efforts and the work ahead in cleaning all this up. Andi (Tern Volunteer 1999/2000 ish)
As one who was stationed at FFS back in 73, its a sad time to see all that was destroyed.
What a blessing you are all safe. My heart is saddened by the wildlife carnage and wrecked infrastructure. May something good come from all this.
I weathered a few storms on Tern back in 1961 as I served out my year there in the Coast Guard. Several times we had a runnway full of coral and other debris swept ashore by numerous storms during 1961.
We had a pond with fish, Joe the turtle, plenty of baby turtles that liked to be hand fed with baloney. We then put a octopus in one day, bolcked off in his own section only to find the next day that it had eaten everything with the exception of Joe the turtle who was somewhat big in size. Needless to say we released the octopus back into the sea.
We also had a pet baby seal who drove us all nuts with his constant need for attention. He would follow us around in the barracks and lay on the couch outside the mess hall. We finally had to let him go also because he just got to be such a pest.
We actually went outside the breakers to the north of Tern and fished often. One of the guys caught a large shark a good 12′ long which we killed back on the island with a few bullets.
One problem with fishing outside the reef to the north was by the time we got a fish to the boat about the only thing left was the head; so we did most fishing within the shoals area itself.
We made a ten foot box kite that could pull us down the runnway while sitting on a battery cart. There were no breaks and stopping was a real problem with one usually in the water.
We used a parachute and a rubber raft that would blow us across the reefs on the south side of the island at great speed.
We had an Hawaian mess cook that was always cooking us fresh fish that still makes my mouth water. Lobster was also on the menu all the time.
During my stay there were 15 Coast Guard and a few PMR folks that kept rotating on and off. We also had two dogs that tended to harass the seals but left the turtles and birds basically alone. I also recall in the winter on the north side where our diving board was there were very large rays jumping out of the water as they swam around the island in a clockwise direction.
I had arrived in November 1960 and left in Novermber 1961. Looking back I can honestly say I enjoyed life on Tern because it was pristine in my eyes without all the bird mess I hear about now. There was nothing but fresh sea air when I was there and the bird population wasn’t as it is today. There were lots of turtles and seals back then but that may have changed by now.
For your library I would suggest a copy of A. Binion Amerson’s book Coral Carrier a history of French Frigate Shoals.
Hi William,
Thanks for being in touch and sharing your stories. My how things have changed, huh? The history of that place fascinates me and yes, I do have my copy of Binion Amerson’s wonderful book.
You are correct, now that the island has been returned to Hawaiian Islands National Wildlife Refuge after military use, those seabirds have populated the island in the tens of thousands and yup, they are certainly smelly and loud. It takes a special type to live there, let alone enjoy it, but we seem to find enough crazy people out there to work for us, myself included!
Did you know that Whale and Skate islands, which formerly supported the majority of nesting seabirds in French Frigate Shoals, are now completely underwater? The final permanent submersion happened sometime in the mid-90′s. So in a way, I suppose the timing of the transfer of Tern Island back to Fish and Wildlife Service couldn’t have been better.
Our practices with respect to fishing and monk seals have also changed drastically. Fishing has been banned within the atoll and for a 50 mile radius outside of it and now that there are little more than a thousand Hawaiian monk seals left in the whole world, we try to give them plenty of space! If I could sum up our current approach to monk seals on Tern Island it would be: make every attempt to convince monk seals that there are no people at all on the island! This can be a challenge sometimes because, as you know, Tern is tiny! But because things are so dreadfully dire for the monk seals, we do whatever we can.
Anyway, thanks again for visiting the site and sharing your stories. I think I am pretty inspired by your 10-foot box kite idea, though with the possibility of air evacuations off the table, I’m not sure if it’s a such a good idea…bummer!
Meg
What a shock. So glad that none of the staff and volunteers were hurt during that collapse, yet so tragic that so many birds were killed and injured. Having worked on the upgrades to the facilities in 2006 I know how much investment in solar systems, batteries, and other essential equipment must have been lost. I am so grateful to the work of the volunteers in cleaning up what they could. I know there was evidence of crumbling walls and leaking roofs for many years that had endured the harsh and salty environment.
I did not see photos of the new generator shed that Brad Weatherby and others built in 2006 or the warehouse so perhaps there is hope to salvage some of that facility. I can only guess if this was a freak weather event or neglected maintenance, or likely a combination of both. I certainly never saw any storms in the 1 and 1/2 years I spent on Tern from 2000 to 2006 that would ever have caused this kind of damage even given the state of the rusted wall panels.
Certainly ongoing concern for the state of things on the island and the many birds and turtles who will be, and always have been, at risk from the structures and debris on the island. I offer my support in any way I can to those who have commited so much for so many years. It sounds as though there needs to be a network of former staff and volunteers who help spread the word of this tragedy and the plans to resolve it.