2009

2009

I know its not the end of the year yet, but already I am final in my conclusion that this has to be the WORST year ever, of my life. Tragedy after tragedy after tragedy….Ive lost count of all the tragedys that have occurred, but one thing is sure, this has been a devastating year.

I came to Apia last Friday because this weekend was my mothers 51st birthday as well as my recently deceased little sister Luana’s birthday as well. It was not going to be a happy weekend but I wanted to be here to support my family through it in whatever way I could, even if it was just being around to fufulu the ipus and make cups of tea.
I was booked to go back to Savaii on a boat on Tuesday, however I was rudely awoken that very day by a rumbling earthmoving earthquake. A vase fell off a counter and shattered and the whole day continued to fall apart thereafter.

My daughter was still asleep when the house started moving, for a few seconds I waited and then when what appeared to be dust, started puffing out from between seams in the walls and ceiling , I grabbed her and ran outside. I couldn’t believe how long the earth shook for. Then, confusion over whether there would be a tsunami warning as the quake was sizeable, eventually, even without any messaged alerts ( I thought the phone companies would be messaging people through a warning but maybe I dreamt that up) we headed off to Aleisa to the higher haven of our relies, the Levis up there.it was soon realised that there was a warning as a wave of people and cars started to fill the roads heading in the same direction and sirens could be heard going off in town. The radio was turned on when we arriverd and immediately spilt out reports of waves having hit the southern coast of the island, already reports of missing people and resorts wiped out. I could not believe it.

There is something about catastrophes.I think, either you crack and are completely overwhelmed with the emotion of it all, or you go into auto pilot, right, what needs to be done, where , when , who , how. This is how I react, I think its some sort of safety mechanism for myself to avoid having to break down about things, cause I know I would if I let my guard down.
I wanted to rush to aleipata and those villages right away and help, I got the number for the disaster management officer coordinating things and she said she would ring me back, but I know they would have been busy , doing their own necessary things. Shortly after making these calls I discovered that one of my uncles wives still had her whole family at Aleipata. Her parents, brother and wife, and their two kids. And she had been trying frantically to get ahold of them all morning, with no avail. She had gotten through to a neighbour who could only inform her that their family house had been washed away, but they were unsure as to whether her relatives had made it inland like most people had tried. So after a while her and my uncle decided to head out to look themselves, in the case that they had just left their cellphones behind and were just unreachable.Which was certainly a posibility as I only thought after I had left the house about what I “should have” taken with me!!

The ride out there was the longest ride in my life. The air was thick with tension as we did not know what to expect. News reports kept rolling out of the radio using terms such as “wiped out” “no warning” “wave hit minutes after the quake” all very dampening to the tiny flicker of hope my cousin had that her family were ok. When we got to the village of Aleipata after an almost 3 hour drive due to all the detours we had to make to get there, we were not prepared for the site that met us. Where were the sandy beaches that these villages are known for, what was all the mud, where were the people? the houses? The animals? The vegetation? One could immediately feel the magnitude of the devastation. What seemed like only a handful of people, mostly teenagers roamed through the village. The road had been eaten away into the sea in several places and we were lucky to have taken a 4WD out as we had to drive through swamp and rubble in some places. Solid brick houses were demolished, steel pipes were bowed completely over like flimsy straw in the wind, huge boulders had been uplifted from the sea onto the land, in the few buildings that still stood, debri could be seen clinging to the windows almost 8 feet up the sill an indication of how high the water had gotten. We saw a body in the water and villagers trying to turn it over to see who the face was presumably for identification , stuff that only happens on the news in other countries, was now happening right before our own eyes.

We had to stop and look carefully to identify the foundation of my cousins’ parents house. When in your life, do you ever expect to do that??? It was surrounded by 2 feet of clay/mud that I kept getting stuck in, my relative wailed calling out for her parents…I did not know where or how to start helping. One could see immediately that they would have been in one of the least fortunate spots in the disaster with a swamp of water (mangrove) behind them, followed by spiky thick mangrove bush. No high ground nearby. The ma’umaga or plantation was some distance in land likely only accessible quickly by car. We saw their family vehicle upturned in the water in the mangrove, squashed like a empty can of coke. Do we swim out to it??what does one do??! There was a sense of urgency in me…but a reality jolt as well…its almost 5 hours since the wave hit. If someone is lying in the water, they are most probably drowned…but one still can not help but hope to do something, see something, help someone. She asked some kids if they knew anything of her parents and they wrecklessly said “I think they are dead but your brother is at the hospital”….talk about breaking bad news in the worst possible way, I jumped in quickly instructing if they knew for sure, had they seen bodies, who told them, and of course the little idiots quickly changed their story saying they didn’t actually know anything about her parents but lots of people were dead.

We headed to the hospital, at the time I think my cousins still thought, that everything was going to be fine, as anyone would. When something like this happens, you just keep telling yourself its all ok at every checkpoint that you can. The hospital was chokablock. The medical team had been working nonstop since they got out there and by the time we arrived there was little more I could offer to help with. All they needed now was large vehicles to move injured people with. I stood talking with a collegue I knew and could hear in the distant a woman screaming, what I did not realise until a minute or two later was that it was my cousin. She had been told that both her parents had died, their bodies had been taken to Apia already as well as her brothers daughter, and they were still searching for his son. His wife had sustained serious injuries and was in critical condition at Apia already. Her brother had been the only persons spared of major injury.

How does one prepare themselves for so many blows at one time. I think going crazy would be accepted. If I thought the ride TO the disaster zone was long, the ride home was even longer. On the way we passed several large trucks, bulldozers, cars belonging to businesses that had ambulance signs plastered on them to convert them to makeshift ones. We also crossed a couple of car accidents, likely due to speeding vehicles, and then an ambulance with a flat tyre, who were carrying people and what also appeared to be dead bodies out to vehicles which had stopped alongside and offered their services. Arriving at the hospital itself brought no joy. Another reality check when a staff member met my cousin with news that all 4 of her relatives presumed dead, 3 in the morgue, and one presumed passed away whos body still had not been found. The morgue area was packed with people and there were rows of people in seats alongside the road. The poor PR skills of the tired staff that were there is to be excused as im sure they have never had to deal with anything of this sort before. Only a few hours after learning that her whole family except one had been killed someone was pushing to ask if she was ready to take the bodies with her (uhmm..the lady is still in shock, let alone has given thought to a 4 person funeral just yet) then there was misinformation from another staff member who said, only 3 bodies were here but there was a kid in the ER with no family who might be her nephew. Then a walk to ER side was met with an angry policeman demanding to know what we wanted, when we explained, he said “well thanks for telling me but move on cause its busy here etc etc” another nurse who was not being asked anyway but was obviously eavesdropping shot out at us “everyone is being treated!!” uhmmm ok lady, (it was a fafafine actually) didn’t ask you if people were being ‘treated’ just need to know if this kid has been identified and if he needs his mum, dad someone by his side!

Anyways, cut a long story short, it wasn’t him. My cousin has indeed lost both her parents, and her brother has lost both children. An unimaginable tragedy in the largest of scales. I can not imagine what they are going through, I have lost one of my own sisters recently who was very dear to me, and it still feels like someone has ripped out my heart and beat it with a lead bat, imagining losing all my family and children in one go…is just the worst life sentence ever. My heart goes out to all the families who have lost children, to mothers who tried but were no match to mother nature, to husbands who clung to their wives only to have them swept out of their arms, to the old folk who struggled…this is a disaster that will be remembered for centuries.