Jimmy Kimmel Forced to Evacuate Island After Japan Earthquake, Escapes Tsunami

Hollywood stars are often quick to respond when disasters like the earthquake that hit Japan early today occur, but they're not often hit by the disaster themselves. Jimmy Kimmel was vacationing on an island in French Polynesia last night when the earthquake hit, and was in the path of the resulting tsunami.

"Suddenly, relaxing on an island in the South Pacific isn't so relaxing anymore," tweeted Kimmel. "Good thing I brought my aqua stilts." That brought in a lot of replies from his followers who told him it wasn't funny to joke about the situation. "

That was the last joke Kimmel made for a while "Not kidding. That's where I am," replied Kimmel, adding, "I wish I was kidding."

Kimmel was low on jokes for the rest of the night and early morning as he was being evacuated from the island. When asked how scared he was on a scale of 1 to 10, Kimmel replied, "a good solid 7. on a small island, with no high ground."

It wasn't until Kimmel was being taken to safety that the joking came back: at about 7am Pacific, Kimmel tweeted, "we are evacuating the island. dogspeed."