It’s been a bad week. Tuesday morning, an 8.1 earthquake rocked our island. We get lots of small, barely noticeable quakes. We usually smile a bit at the wake-up call and go on about our business. Tuesday morning the house started to shake – and shake harder – and sway on its foundation. The intensity kept building. The quake lasted long enough for Mr. Shark and I to argue about whether we should head for doorways or outside. Doorways won, because they were closer. I held on to our daughter; he held on to the nearby tv. (And THAT will be fodder for family stories for years to come!) After three or so minutes, the violent shaking stopped.
We looked outside. The ocean is about 70 yards away. Our house is on a cliff about 40 feel above sea level. Everything looked normal. – bright blue sky, bright blue ocean, no visible cracks in our walls, the one house next to us still standing. The neighbors walking out – also looking at the ocean.
My laptop was still on. I had been answering some early morning mail before work I clicked on the USGS earthquake site – bookmarked because of the event a few months ago in Tonga. Nothing yet on our quake. I clicked on "did you feel this?" and filed a quick report. Then I clicked on the Tsunami Warning site – also bookmarked. Nothing. Refresh. Nothing. Refresh. A warning posted. Back to Earthquakes. Our "event" is up and listed as a 7.9 with the epicenter only 120 miles southwest of our island. The tsunami – if one had been generated – was predicted to hit about 50 minutes after the quake. By that count, we had about 10 minutes.
We heard sirens in the distance. The island’s tsunami warning system consists of police cars driving up and down the coast, The sirens got louder and we could hear faint sounds of a loudspeaker. We saw flashing lights and – holy shit –the cops drove into our yard, ordering us to evacuate.
They knew, but we didn’t, that the first tsunami wave had raced toward the island and screamed into the low-lying villages a mere 10 minutes or so after the quake.
We stayed. The evacuation route would take us through some dangerous areas before we reached higher ground. We hoped the cliffs would protect us. We watched as the sea level rose and the waves crashed into the face of the cliff, sending spray shooting 100 feet in the air – harmlessly, spectacularly, dare I say beautifully?
The tv was tuned to the local radio broadcast. We listened with half an ear as we watched the ocean. We heard the announcer say "Here it comes. We’re off the air..." And there was silence. We learned later that one of the waves had overwhelmed the first floor of their building.
The time sequence blurs. Our neighbor, who runs a big construction company, is called with a request to bring his heavy equipment crews to the village where I used to live. We begin to hear stories – none confirmed yet – of casualties and of mass evacuations. Our friend, Michelle, is gone. One of the homes in her village, on higher ground, is now sheltering at least 60 people. Four dead. Now six. Unknown injured.
We turn to CNN. American Samoa is the lead story and we are amazed at the pictures being broadcast. It is still a beautiful day and everything around us looks so normal.
Messages have started to arrive from family off-island, asking if we are safe. I dash off one email and a quick FaceBook post that we are safe. The power goes off. The phones, cell and land line, are dead.
Five hours of silence. We see a few people. Each has a bit of new information – all of it bad. Now nine dead. A few more names... My daughter’s school mate is missing; her mother dead.
The power finally comes back on. Local tv isn’t broadcasting, so we turn to CNN. The pictures are worse. Cell phones work once every 10 tries. More snippets of – all bad. Eighteen children swept away from a school in nearby Western Samoa. Entire villages gone.
...
And now it is Saturday morning. The sky and the ocean are still bright blue. The weather has been beautiful these past four days. Deceptive, Mother Nature is...
Yesterday, we drove about five miles west to the village of Leone. Most of the village is fine – except where the waves roared ashore, tossing cars into houses and houses into rubble. Seven dead in Leone.
We turned and drove about 10 miles to the village of Pago Pago. Again, most of the village was fine – except where the waves roared ashore...
The death toll now stands at 32 here and five times that number in Western Samoa.
The air in Leone and Pago was thick with dust and smoke and the stench of chaos, as so many people worked under the hot sun to clear the ruin. Rescue efforts had become the occasional, tragic, recovery. The bodies of two girls were discovered late yesterday in a truck. Boats littered the shore, a few thrown far inland. My friend’s car was lodged in a second story window – looking like a county fair stunt gone wrong.
As our Governor said, there is not one family on island that has not been touched by the loss of family or friends. My 14 year-old daughter attended a memorial service yesterday for her friend. Too many graves are being dug this morning and there are too many tears...
But DailyKos is a political blog, not my private therapist, so here is the connection. I lurk at FreeRepublic. DK is fire-walled at work and when I’m really bored, I like to see what the wingnuts are saying. There have been a few stories there about the tsunami, always followed by inane comments bashing President Obama for treating us worse than Bush treated the Katrina victims. This morning, as we see FEMA and other relief agency boots on the ground and as we receive our third message of condolence from President Obama, I finally registered at FR.
One post. A futile attempt to correct the record.
I know.
It won’t matter.
The sky and the ocean are still bright blue.