It wasn’t a false alarm.

Hawaii was lucky to have escaped destruction when yesterday’s tsunami reached state shores after racing down from the Aleutian Islands.

“This was the real thing,” said Richard Sillcox, a scientist for the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at Ewa Beach. “There was definitely a serious potential for destruction. We were close to getting it.”

The warning sent thousands of tourists and residents on all Islands to higher ground and upper floors. More than 8,000 Oahu residents gathered at 12 evacuation centers opened by Civil Defense and manned by Red Cross volunteers. The massive evacuation left motorists stalled for hours on roadways, not only on Oahu but on Neighbor Islands unfamiliar with traffic jams.

Two of the most notable evacuees in the state were former Philippine President Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos. The couple left their Kalanianaole Highway beachfront home about 4:30 p.m. “for higher ground,” said a man who answered the phone at the house. He declined to say where the Marcoses went.

The Civil Defense radio warning system broadcast the tsunami message in English, Japanese, Samoan, Tongan and in Chinese and Filipino dialects.

In the end, the evacuation turned out to just a test of the state’s emergency systems.

The earthquake-generated tsunami from the Gulf of Alaska created waves less than two feet in Hawaii. There was no damage.

The earthquake centered about 100 miles southeast of Adak in the North Pacific and nearing 7.7 on the Richter scale shook the Aleutians about 12:47 p.m. (Hawaii time). …

“If the earthquake had been bigger or the movement created more energy on the ocean, we may have had bigger waves and some real trouble,” Sillcox said. “This was not a false alarm. There were real waves out there and we were on the threshold of receiving them.” …

… The largest wave registered by the federal agency was at Hilo Harbor where a two-foot “non-destructive” swell rolled into the harbor, Sillcox said.