two to four feet. that s fairly significant. the wave that hits hawaii could, in all intents and purposes, be higher and stronger than that. expect it to hit hawaii around 8:00 to 8:30 eastern time. that s 3:00 in the morning pacific time. those are the two important dates here for our u.s. viewers and those who have friends and family who live over there in hawaii. 3:00 a.m. local time in hawaii. on the east coast, it will be around 8:00 a.m. eastern time. talking about the speed of a jumbo jet, 500 miles an hour. it will get to south america as well. it s traveling towards new zealand and australia. the rule of thumb, obviously, and the common sense tells you the farther away you are from the epicenter of that quake and beginning of that tsunami, the less intense it will be. but this will be the strongest tsunami that we ve seen on the west coast certainly in the last ten years. we ll have to check the records for this.
natural disaster is something that creates an awful lot of uncertainty. there s no question the insurance companies will have billions and billions and billions of dollars in claims as they try to figure out what s going on here. clearly, a big economy with a lot of infrastructure, a lot of people, and we re still finding out what the fallout will be. we ll be watching this closely and see what this means for other markets in the neighborhood and for japan as well. christine, thank you. we re long away from figuring out what the fallout will be. we re just getting started on this disaster, frankly, folks. and hawaii has ordered evacuations in its coastal areas because of the threat of a tidal wave shut off by the japan earthquake. they also extended the tsunami warning to the whole of the pacific basin except for mainland united states and canada. they want to evacuate people, especially from the low-lying areas. hawaii one of the areas that is being asked to get people out of thei
west coast is a tsunami warning issued from oregon to the washington border, moving down the coastline to california to point conception, which is just north of santa barbara in through they may have extended this to the mexican border at this point. it looks like this may have been expanded to the mexican border. we re talking about a timeline of when it s going to reach the u.s. west coast would be 7:00 a.m. pacific time. so pacific time, 7:00 a.m., that would be 10:00 a.m. eastern time here. so in about 4 1/2 hours. hawaii, when it hits hawaii, it could have more strength, and obviously it s going to be higher. we had someone on earlier who estimates the wave that hits the west coast here anywhere from
and it s not really clear how many people are going to be in harm s way. a lot depends on the size of the tsunami when it comes to shore. i can tell you the population of hawaii is more than 1 million people. a lot of people live along the coast. a lot of people do live on the ridges. my family, for instance, lives up on the ridges. so we re safe. i got to tell you, my hill tonight is very, very crowded. people headed up there tonight. as you said, if there s any bit of good news, it s the lead time they are able to get those warnings out and get people out. hopefully, everything will go smoothly. carter evans in hawaii. we ll check in with you again. thanks so much. let s turn to rob marciano, helping us with coverage this morning. excuse me. we re going to check in with rob in a moment. i need to turn to barbara starr, pentagon correspondent. she s standing by as well. barbara, good morning. how is the pentagon, how is the defense department now mobilizing? reporter: good morni
zealand or along the pacific rim on the western edge of this ring of fire, typically we don t see a tsunami warning or a tsunami reach the west coast, let alone hawaii. but this is such a huge event and a pretty shallow event at that. it s a slightly smaller event than the banda achi quake. but it s six of one, half a dozen of the other when you talk about how much this shook japan and shook the pacific with that kind of wave we re talking about. these are the aftershocks. the aftershocks that we ve been seeing are most cases well over 6.0 magnitude. so major quakes just from the aftershocks alone. certainly we saw that across parts of chile and across haiti as well. as far as what we re looking at on the west coast this is not working. what we re looking at on the