Note – no internet for the past day so this is a day late.

I finally arrived in American Samoa last night – after a five hour flight where I was fortuitously seated next to a large Samoan gentleman who turned out to be the matai (chief) of the village of Leone on the western end of the island. Leone was one of the areas hardest hit by the tsunami – 11 of the 34 deaths attributed to the tsunami were in his village. He was very gracious and we had plenty of time for a long conversation about what happened in his village. He had tried to push tsunami awareness after the 2004 Indian Ocean event, but many people were apathetic. On Sept 29 many people evacuated on feeling the ground shake – there had been a number of education efforts over the past year – but many people used their vehicle and some got stuck in traffic. For a number of the victims, being very large was a liability. Some people were just too big to be able to quickly walk to higher ground.

Couldn’t see much on the drive to Tisa’s Barefoot Bar where we are staying. The amount of cleanup is impressive. Some damaged boats and buildings at the back of Pago Pago harbor but most of the coast looked surprisingly ok. Tisa’s is on a beautiful little pocket beach with four fale (sleeping shacks) right on the beach. There was some flooding here during the tsunami but very little damage. I do plan to evacuate if a strong earthquakes hits in the night. Mosquito screens make our beds look regal. So far the trade winds have been pretty strong and I haven’t noticed many insects.’

First real glance at the place was around 5 AM with day dawning. American Samoa doesn’t have the big vast beaches of Hawaii, but the small beaches have pristine white sand, no people, no trash, and the Manau Island’s to the east are supposed to be great for diving and snorkeling. It’s a surprise to me that there little tourism here – to me this is a hands down winner over Waikiki. Very full day of meetings with officials from a variety of agencies to introduce ourselves, find out what was happening with their organizations and how we could collaborate with their efforts. First to FEMA who holds planning meetings every Monday, Wed. and Friday morning. We didn’t have any official introduction, just the letters Marjory had provided us with our EERI affiliation (thanks Marjorie – they really helped). We ended up going right to the top meeting with the Federal Coordinating Officer in charge – who was surprisingly interested, genuine and supportive of what we were trying to do. Before going on this trip we had been warned that the response phase was still in full swing and to steer clear of all government agencies involved with response. The actual situation is quite different. Response was over and the recovery problems were looming large – top on the list debris removal and processing and health issues related to water supplies contaminated by damaged cess pools. Debris is a problem – tsunami debris is very dirty, generally a mix of sand, vegetation, metal and building materials. Fortunately they have adequate space for debris and the landfill and scrap metal yards are in close proximity. They try to do primary sorting of metal/no metal on site so that the debris only needs to be handled once. The traditional way of dealing with woody debris and vegetation is to burn. But much of the wood is pressure treated and the burning creates additional environmental issues.

One of the group we met with was Joe Tolard, head of the Department of Homeland Securities Geospatial Analys group – he’s a whiz at GIS and space-based imaging and an alum of Humboldt’s international studies option in Environmental Systems masters program (he said hi to Steve Steinberg). He gave us a great number of maps and before/after space based images.

Met with the National Park folks. The park lands were barely impacted by the tsunami but park headquarters and visitor center is at the head of Pago Pago harbor where some of the highest water levels were observed. The building was destroyed along with many archeological artifacts, and all the computer data. Fortunately some of the computer data had been backed up and they were able to retrieve some data off retrieved C-drives, but some was lost. Another lesson – if its important, keep backup computer data in different locations. We spent a long time talking with the park archeologist who experienced the peak of the tsunami in Pango Plaza, one of the hardest hit areas. She is also from Leone and three of the victims were her sister-in-law and two nieces and a sister is currently in intensive care in Hawaii.

We met with territory officials in the afternoon and reconnected with the three engineers in our group. A lot of discussion on how to tackle some of the main recovery issues. Land use planning, building design requirements and cess pool – sewage treatment issues are at the top of the list. The planning team will need to present a recovery plan with recommendations soon to the territorial government and there are many touchy issues. Land ownership is complex and traditional in Samoa villages. Sewage treatment in low-lying areas is very difficult. No detailed tsunami hazard assessment has been completed here and 60 percent of residents are below the poverty line.

Final meeting of the day was with two FEMA disaster response workers. One was Jeanne Johnston, a 1946 tsunami survivor who has worked with Walt Dudley on collecting tsunami survivor stories for years and also led the State of Hawaii’s tsunami program for civil defense for a few years. She sees the lack of a full hazard assessment for Samoa as a major problem and has been surprised that few NTHMP resources have been spent here outside of some TsunamiReady funding.