Hawaii is no stranger to natural disasters, from lava and hurricanes to tsunami.

Click here to watch Paul Drewes's report.

Destructive waves have hit before, but now emergency personnel want to makesure people are prepared for a massive tsunami.

It is not a doomsday scenario, it is actually something that has happened before.

Now plans are in the works for a worst case scenario: the possibility of a huge tsunami hitting Hawaii head on.

Hawaii has been hit by destructive waves, but one of the biggest was 500 years ago, when a massive tsunami (similar to the Japanese tsunami of 2011) slammed into our shores.

"A large magnitude 9.2, 9.3 event right in the eastern Aleutian Islands. If you look at a map that area in the Pacific Ocean points directly at us," said Rhett Butler with the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology.

Tsunami generated by earthquakes in Alaska and Kamchatka Peninsula have caused damage in Hawaii, but those waves weren't directly aimed at our islands.

If an extreme tsunami came from the Aleutians north-facing beaches would see the biggest waves, but other shores would not be spared.

"The wavelength of tsunami is huge. We're looking at a fault 600-700 kilometers that breaks. That is on the order of the whole Hawaiian islands, so the wave will wrap around the whole islands," added Butler.

Read the rest here:

Hawaii plans for possibility of extreme tsunami