‘AIRBORNE OVER A NUCLEAR EXPLOSION': South Walton pilot escapes earthquake's devastation

For South Walton’s Leslie Provow, landing in Tokyo on March 10 was the end of another routine flight.

As a pilot for United Airlines, Provow makes the jaunt into Tokyo quarterly.

The routine aspect of it changed suddenly the next day when she and her crew boarded a van to take them back to the airport for the return trip to San Francisco.

“Just after we got into the van and started down the road, the earthquake happened,” she said.

That first one-minute jolt happened at 2:46 p.m. Tokyo time.

“There was a lot of wind,” she recalls, and the driver said, “Earthquake.”

Provow, who has been a pilot for 23 years, beginning while serving in the U.S. Navy, wasn’t that concerned as Japan often experiences tremors. About five minutes later, though, the van experienced another violent jolt.

“We saw power poles bending and cars wobbling down the road. But to be in it and experience it seemed surreal,” said Provow.

The driver made a call, then told his passengers it was a magnitude of 6.4. More aftershocks continued to hit every five or six minutes.

One-and-a-half hours into the drive, all roads were shut down.

“It took us five hours to go 30 miles. We got the first minute out of the way before it started, but that was all,” said Provow. “We saw water mains broken. We saw glass buildings waiving. And the hits kept coming.”

She was told it took her driver 12 hours to make it home.

Provow thought they had seen the worst of it. But the epicenter was about 150 miles away from where the crew was.

“We heard of tsunami warnings, but we weren’t realizing what happened,” she said.

On making it to the airport, they could see there were no planes landing or taking off. The airport had closed. Trains had also shut down. The city was at a standstill.

They went to a nearby hotel and found around 500 people milling about in the lobby and restaurant.

“It was like a hurricane party because we were helpless,” said Provow.

News made its way to them intermittently that the earthquake was now being gauged at 6.8, then 8.9.

“That was when we realized we weren’t going anywhere. It was a surreal feeling,” she said.

With nothing else to do, Provow went to bed about midnight and felt the hotel shake with aftershocks all during the night.

After a 15-hour closure, the airport reopened at 6 a.m. the next day. Provow was finally able to take off between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m.

“We were told a power plant was about to explode and asked to be expedited. Our passengers wanted to get out of Tokyo. We finally got airborne over a nuclear explosion. We were happy to get off, but oddly, we weren’t full. Since roads were closed, people probably couldn’t get there,” she said.

However, Provow didn’t realize the magnitude of the disaster until she returned to the States, just a day late.

“I didn’t realize the extent of the damage because nothing bad was happening to me,” she said. “We were spared.”

Fortunately, she never saw the tsunami.

“Such a disaster is a horrible thing to deal with, but if any country is best prepared to deal with it, that one is,” said Provow. “Those people are so organized and prepared to deal, I guess because they experience so much.”