WALNUT CREEK, Calif. Brittany Miller's mother called shortly after 1 p.m. PDT from Kona, after having been evacuated to the top floor of the Four Seasons Resort on the Kona-Kohala coast of the Big Island, where she was spending a getaway weekend with her husband.

"They were totally panicking, they were really scared, they didn't know what to do," said Miller, 20, a massage therapist at the Aloha Island Trading Co. in Pleasanton, Calif. She plans to move to Hawaii in December when her mother launches a day spa in Maui.

It was a scenario likely repeated many times as California residents heard from relatives and friends after the earthquake struck shortly after 10 a.m. PDT.

In a vacuum of immediate credible information, the hotel where Miller's mother was staying took no chances.

Hotel personnel called guests and met with them, including Miller's mother and stepfather, Tammee and Robert Auster, an attorney who works for a San Ramon, Calif., company and commutes to Hawaii about once a week.

"They evacuated her to the top garage area," Miller said. "They thought there was going to be a tsunami."

As the phone calls came in, so did the worry in some of the callers' voices.

"She's like, `Turn the news on, there's a huge earthquake,'" Miller said of her mother.

Fremont, Calif., resident Lou Uyehara received a call from her husband George, who is staying in their second home in the town of Keaau on the Big Island. He was lying on the floor watching a basketball game when the earthquake struck.

"He said it was like a roller coaster and it was not a funny thing," Uyehara said. "After the earthquake stopped, he said a very strong wind started to blow and thought maybe the Kilauea Volcano was erupting."

But Uyehara said the only damage to their home was to a mirror that fell off the wall.

Martha Bush received a call shortly after the earthquake from her 35-year-old niece, Patty Suddath, who lives on Oahu. Suddath she was worried because she was unable to reach relatives on the Big Island.

"They didn't get anything in Honolulu, but we have family all over the Big Island and we have not been able to reach them," said Bush, a Marina, Calif., resident whose husband is president of the Hawaiian cultural organization Olena Productions. "We're worried because they are still getting aftershocks."

Eric Tao, president of the San Francisco-based Hawaii Chamber of Commerce of Northern California, said his father Eugene, a retired newspaper editor, called by cell phone from Hilo on the Big Island to say he was OK.

Many of the hotels on that island are on the west side, near the epicenter, and lost power. But Tao was surprised the power outage was so widespread.

"A power outage is rare on Oahu," Tao said.