Our field team became smaller today. Two team members head to American Samoa and then back to the mainland. It’s been seven days of working from before 7 AM to past 10 PM and we’ve become strongly bonded. It’s sort of a breaking of the “fellowship”. I’m also tired – the field days are so full that there is little time to transcribe notes, download and sort photos and, if the internet is working, try to keep on top of my day job. Right now I’m about 3 days behind.

Sundays in Samoa are for church, family and reflexion. I spend the day at the Hidden Gardens condensing what we’ve done into the outline of a report. Since our assignment in Samoa was to focus on community vulnerability and resilience, we’ve developed a framework that defines resilience and vulnerability as a process rather than a product. It covers both pre- and post-event components and short and long term perspectives. Perhaps the most important issue that has jumped out of our visits both here and in American Samoa is that most people tried to do the right thing. Some were spectacularly successful like the Sinalei Resort manager who had a siren, practiced evacuation drills, and sounded his siren on feeling the earthquake. He could not have performed any better and his prompt action likely saved hundreds of lives both at Sinalei and at nearby resorts where people could hear the siren. Most people, however, needed more than the single trigger of the earthquake shaking to get them to take action. Studies of human behavior have shown that many people need a second or third signal before they will respond. At Coconut Beach next to Sinalei, people didn’t respond to the shaking, but did to the combination of shaking and the neighboring siren. The most common second signal was seeing the water recede. The tide gauge recordings at both Apia and Pago Pago show that the first wave arrival was actually a small positive wave – the water rose initially. But the amplitude was very small and we haven’t talked to anyone who noticed it. This was followed by a substantial drawdown the sea floor exposed in many areas. Unlike many stories from Indian Ocean countries where people were drawn to the ocean by the receding water, everyone in both Samoa and American Samoa recognized this as a danger signal. But there was still a lot of confusion – confusion on how far inland or up to go, confusion about multiple waves. A number of people headed back into the inundation area after the first wave retreated – usually to look for relatives – and were surprised by a larger second or third wave.

I’ve been mulling over a number of themes that my teammates and I have noted over the past 5 days we’ve been in Samoa, and how the situation here differs from American Samoa. One topic I’m interested in looking into further is altruism. In every disaster there are stories of people taking action that puts themselves at risk for people who may be total strangers. While these stories sometimes are noted in the newspaper, I’m need to see if much work has been done on this topic from the natural disaster perspective. I’m only aware of altruism as an academic topic because of the work of the Oliners at Humboldt who have made a career of examining altruism in the context of the holocaust. I never thought of it before as having a relationship to natural disaster response – but now the connection seems obicous.

I’m not making much progress pulling together the report. It’s hard for me to work without internet access. I’m so accustomed to pulling up various web sites to fill in holes and answer questions. A diversion mid afternoon when a young woman shows up at the Hidden Garden to claim her luggage before flying back to New Zealand. In the course of our conversation about who we were, what we were doing and how long we were staying she tells me the Wednesday flight I’ve got from Pago Pag back to Honolulu has been cancelled. I’m hoping this is only a rumor – I’ll deal with it tomorrow when I’m back in American Samoa.