First Images of the Tsunami in Hawaii (27/02/10)

After a day of several tide fluctuations along the Hawaii coast, the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center lifted a warning triggered by a massive 8.8-magnitude earthquake in Chile Saturday morning.

While evacuations were ordered and roads into tourist-heavy Waikiki closed off, officials said the state escaped unscathed, with initial waves looking more like an extreme fluctuation in the tide than a giant tsunami. A tsunami warning was canceled for Hawaii by 2 p.m.

An official from the center gave an optimistic view about the tsunami while it was causing dramatic tide fluctuations in the Aloha State.

"I think we dodged a bullet," Gerard Fryer, a geophysist for the tsunami center of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, which issues warnings to almost every country around the Pacific Rim and to most of the Pacific island states, told reporters in Hawaii Saturday afternoon. "It's sort of the best tsunami you think you can have."

In California, Oregon, Washington state, parts of Alaska and coastal British Colombia, tsunami advisories, the lowest level of warning, were issued, and the West Coast barely felt any effects from the tsunami.

"Anti-climatic. And you can print that," said Dan Berg, assistant harbormaster in Ketchikan, Alaska.

But other areas in the Pacific Rim are still in the bullet's path. Japan's Meteorological Agency warned that a "major" tsunami of up to 9 feet could hit northern coastal areas early Sunday morning.

The tsunami hit Hawaii around noon local time. The extent of the damage was not immediately clear, but the effects of the tsunami were obvious, exposing reefs and sending dark streaks of muddy, sandy water offshore. Water later washed over Coconut Island, a small park off the coast of Hilo.

CBS News Affiliate KGMB-TV in Honolulu reported a figure from the National Weather Service that the water off Hilo Bay on the Big Island fluctuated by 3 feet in 20 minutes.