The star speaker as the conference opened was not a civil defense director, geophysicist, or oceanographer, but a tsunami survivor.

Harriet Rompon endured the deadly tsunami that swept through Hilo in 1946. She has told her kids and grandkids about the wave that destroyed her home, killed her mother and nearly killed her, but in the 62 years since it happened she had not talked publicly about it until now.

"My mom starts running back," Rompon said. "She was waiting for the bus to go to work, but she keeps running ... she kept running back. All I heard her say was, "Tsunami! Tsunami!"

Rompon was just 9 years old on April 1, 1946. She lived with her parents right on the water near downtown Hilo. Rompon's mother, Tsunae Fukui, had seen the ocean recede and knew disaster was about to strike.

"So we ran across the street to where the Coast Guard station was. As we ran across the street, she fell," Rompon said. "And she couldn't stand up. And she's just yelling for someone to help us. But when I looked ... I don't know but somehow I just looked up and there was this black cloud like. This black. And I can't remember from then until when I found myself on a bridge. I must have knocked out."

Much of Hilo had been destroyed, but Rompon was still alive ... tangled in a jumble of debris. Then a second wave began to suck her out to sea. The tug of the water was too strong to swim against.

"In the meantime there was something else that I saw that could change my life. And that was a pig that was, you know, going. Making noise and going. So I says, OK, I have to grab his tail to save my self because that's the only thin I saw. So I just jumped and grabbed his tail.

Rompon's new found friend, a neighborhood pig, kept her afloat until a man with a rope fished her out of the water. Now this survivor urges everyone to take tsunami education and awareness seriously.

"In our time we didn't have any warnings about tsunami. I didn't even know the word tsunami. So it's good if you can listen to people who talk about dangerous situations. And head for the hills when you hear the words (Tsunami! Tsunami!)."

159 people, including Rompon's mother, were killed in the 1946 tsunami.

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