Scary Washing Machine

This is our Story.

There are many others but this is an account of our experiences from the quake in the morning of the 29th to our flight out a few days later.

We were asleep in our beach Fale (hut) when the quake woke us at about 6:47am and expecting an evacuation we got up, got dressed and left our fale(hut) to see what the story was, there was no evacuation, there had been no warning of a tsunami issued and no one really seemed to be in any hurry to leave the resort.
People were obviously shaken up by the quake (no pun intended) but the threat of a wave was not really taken seriously by most. Tsunamis only happen on TV right? Some people did panic immediately and they left the beach in cars straight away, some looked out to sea nervously for a sign of a wave, but most went back to bed or continued building sandcastles or drinking their cups of tea and going about their normal morning routine, confident that a wave would not appear.
While we stood on the balcony of the main fale where everybody would normally meet for breakfast later on at 8:30am a young Samoan boy called Vai asked me if I thought there would be a wave. I told him I didn't know but if there was one I would probably be the fastest Parlangi on two legs! As it turns out I wasn’t too far from the truth! We were soon joined by who we presumed was the owner of the resort and together we scanned the sea nervously though everything appeared to be very normal.
It wasn’t until the reef began to drain out and the normally ever-present surf died away to nothing that people suddenly realised the inevitable was about to happen. One person was heard to comment that it was probably just a low tide but as we started to notice the water really starting to rush out and the reef sitting high and dry the complacency was quickly replaced by grim realisation that we were about to experience something fearsome.
“It couldn’t happen to us” soon became “It’s really happening to us” and we ran......Fast.
The young boy and his friend ran left warning people on one side of the beach, we ran to the right, running up the beach through the fales yelling out for people to get out of bed and run. I remember being frustrated that my yells didn't seem loud enough, they weren't half as loud as my heartbeat in my own ears. It was just before 7am so many people were still in bed and I thought about the horror of the wave coming in and catching people unawares. We got about half way along the complex yelling out and then out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw the wave arrive at the outer reef across the lagoon. I didn’t really stop to study it considering the circumstances but I knew what it was. We had clearly run out of time, the wave had reached the lagoon which meant it was no more than 70 metres from us so we turned and ran inland as fast as we possibly could, across the road and through the village towards the higher ground at the back of the flat land. I remember people running in all directions and us leaping over a corrugated iron fence, minding not to cut our feet on the tin as we cleared it. We ran through a pig pen and straight up the steep bank to the high ground which was probably 20-30 feet before it became more like a cliff and much harder to climb.
It was at this point we stopped and turned and witnessed the immense wave hit all the beachfront buildings at once with a noise like thunder as they exploded to matchsticks on impact. The wave then roared, unslowed over the road and laden with debris it picking up the rental cars, many of them with people inside them and it threw them out in front like toys. It then smashed into the buildings below us, knocking the strong concrete structures to pieces instantly and on it came until it struck the bank immediately below us. This was all within a matter of several seconds. It got to within a couple of metres of our feet and then we realised another surge was coming so we climbed a bit higher and the next surge washed over top where we were previously standing.
My wife and I had picked up two young Samoan babies along the way from a mother who was struggling to climb with the two children and they were frozen in fear but not crying. I think they were well past crying. I just remember hearing Zana saying "Oh no, Oh no. Oh my God!" over and over again while I repeatedly said somthing a little more "punctuated".
As the crashing of rocks, concrete and cracking trees subsided and the flow slowed and began to reverse we heard people in the water calling out for help. A young Samoan guy we now know was named Otele courageously dived into the swirling mess and swam out managing to pull in two young girls, one at a time as they clung to floating debris. He was then drawn around the bend out of site by the current and as we climbed higher we heard him call out for someone for first aid. He had pulled a Kiwi girl from the water who was naked and covered in cuts and scratches, her lower leg was severely cut and the lower half of her calf muscle was hanging off. None of us knew first aid but we flushed the mud and grit out of her leg with some bottled drinking water then ripped up my lavalava(Sarong) and bandaged her leg up to hold the flesh in place and stop the bleeding.
We put the rest of the lavalava around her so she had some clothing and two strong men carried her up the hill and over to the village medical centre which was very luckily nearby. We followed them up the steep slope but much slower, it was myself and my Wife, a couple from Raglan NZ, the Samoan lady and her two babies and a dog who had wisely followed us up the hill. Together we climbed up the steep bank and then found our way through the bush towards higher ground and the medical centre which we knew was there because we'd been there the day before.
My wife had her jandals on still somehow but mine had come off in the dash so i used some soft coconut husk and tied it to my feet with some strips of cloth, they were some strange looking shoes but they were great and I spent most of the day in them and they allowed me to walk a lot further and faster than i could have in bare feet. It was amazing how all of a sudden very simple things become very important. Drinking water for instance as at that stage there was no way to tell how long we would have to survive with what we had.
From there on it was like we were refugees, it was pretty much chaos as we had made it out onto the only uphill road in the area. The road was a jam of traffic, there were carloads of people from the high lands trying to get down to the beach to see for themselves or help recover people and opposing that there were car loads of people trying to escape the horror and get to high ground and everyone was on their horns. The med centre ended up being used as a morgue for the dead and bodies were already arriving from the beach on the back of pickup trucks and carried by survivors. People were directed further up the hill where we got busy converting a half-built house into a make-shift hospital and camp and they bought all the injured in who had been temporarily treated at the med centre in and lay them out on the floor on flax mats.
It was amazing how everyone just worked together and got everything done fast and efficiently, within a few hours there was fresh water, food, toilets dug, parties of people off gathering coconuts for food and the house had turned into a really good shelter considering the circumstances and lack of resources. Through out the day more survivors arrived and unfortunately more bodies including babies which were bought up to the house for identification by family before being returned to the morgue.
The doctors and paramedics arrived around lunch time and they immediately treated the more severely injured patients with IV drips and proper first aid for wounds. Lists were being taken of the survivors, the wounded and the missing and despite the relief of seeing familiar faces alive and well at the house it soon became sadly evident that there were a few faces missing.
Once of the people I was very pleased to see young Vai from the resort who exclaimed when he saw me, “Hey it’s the fastest Parlangi on two legs!” Despite the situation he could still make a joke which was good to see.
I went back down to the beach to help recover bodies and to see if there was anything left of our fale or possessions. It was a total war-zone, just rubble and broken and scattered junk everywhere. The strangest mix match of things could be seen all piled together, broken furniture, dead fish, books, torn suitcases, shoes, bricks, mattresses, on and on and on covering basically the entire beach and lowlands. There were no man made structures left, just the amazingly resilient coconut trees. A lot of the bigger trees were broken or gone. The cars were smashed and scattered and only the concrete foundations of the buildings remained. The sewerage tanks had been blown open and the sewerage had mixed in with the flood waters making everything a serious heath risk for open cuts which most people had on their feet and hands.
There were children's bodies being pulled out of the mess and desperate family members grouped around covered bodies on the bank while others still searched for their missing loved ones.
I thankfully never discovered a body myself but other people from the resort who were down there with me did and I know it was harrowing for them. The family that owned our resort lost close to 20 of their people. 13 confirmed dead on the day with another 6-7 yet unaccounted for. I cant imagine what that would be like, the losses were so immense it hurts to think what the survivors were going through as they realised how many they had lost.
As I picked my way through the carnage I somehow found my underwater camera case about 100m away from where our fale had stood and it was all smashed up and even had some drops of blood on it, no idea how they got there.
It was hard to even tell were our fale had been as the beach was so scarred by the water and much of the beautiful white sand had been sucked away exposing the black volcanic rock below. Where the beach met the road, normally level with each other it was now a steep bank, tangled with downed power-lines and the beach was thick with piles of unidentifiable bits and pieces of smashed objects.
Unfortunately despite the horror of the situation the looters had already arrived, perhaps initially there to help, greed had got the better of them and they were drunk on the beach from finding bottles of spirits and Vailima (the local lager) and all the car stereos were already stolen despite the obvious water damage. I found lots of empty wallets but the looters had already taken the cards and money out. Instead of helping the families recover the dead they were off getting drunk and stealing, it was unbelievable and disgusting to see.
All the suitcases washed up had been opened and anything worth anything had been taken out.
I returned to the house in the late afternoon to be with Zana and it was not long till aid vehicles began to drive the long and now quite treacherous drive to Apia along the severely damaged coastal road taking injured people to the hospital in the tray. We got a ride in one of these with a family who had been completely torn apart by the wave. A grandmother and her grand-daughter sat sobbing beside us with no sign of the child's mother or father. It was very sad. It was also very nerve-racking as the car was often stuck in traffic or waiting for debris to be cleared and the road was right next to the sea. Fresh Tsunami warnings had been issued all day and everyone was pretty terrified of the sea. running a second time would be impossible as there was so much debris piled everywhere.
We eventually made it to the hospital and then to our hotel in Apia only to find it completely deserted as Apia had been evacuated due to yet another Tsunami warning.
We spent one night in the hotel which was eerily quiet and contrasting to the images of the preceding day and we slept deeply, exhausted by what we had been through.
My wife and I were really lucky as we were taken in by a lovely family living in Apia whom we had met the weekend previously over breakfast at the resort and they took us in with open arms and gave us everything we needed with not even a second thought. We spent the last two days of our stay with the family and we are extremely grateful for their wonderful generosity. Despite losing their own close friend to the tragedy at a different bay to us they took us in to their home and helped us when we needed it most.
We lost everything we had with us to the wave. I never found anything of ours other than the smashed camera case and we both came home to NZ luggage-less wearing borrowed lavalava's and jandals. We had rescheduled our travel and had forgotten to change the date on the travel insurance but it's all just stuff and doesn't matter. At least we had our lives and each other and a whole new perspective on things like life and death.
The Samoan south-east coast is destroyed. They need all the support they can get so if you get a chance and you can afford it please help them out by donating, whether it be money or goods. Many many people have lost everything they owned, their homes and more than half their family at the same time.
The horror on the TV is totally real, even more real if you're there to see it in person and the whole ordeal is something we will never ever forget.
We now have a new observers perspective on fear, tragedy and loss.

Regards,
Mike & Zana

The following photographs are all of Lalumanu. They show the extent of the damage suffered by the community at the hands of the Tsunami.

Photos by: Greg Bowker, Brett Phibbs, NZ Defence Force, Dave Leng, Jordan Kwan