On September 29, 2009 a tsunami swept across the island of American Samoa after a powerful earthquake hit the South Pacific. Soon after, the American Red Cross conducted relief efforts on the island. Red Cross workers and volunteers began aid immediately. Food and supplies were sent to the island. Hotshot teams were in the field disbursing food, water, pillows, linen, rakes, shovels, baby formula, and diapers. Red Cross partnered with the local government and helped set up yurts to shelter families. Health Services worked with families to assist with funeral expenses; and Disaster Mental Health and Spiritual Care teams were there to lend emotional support. Client casework teams are currently working with victims to help plan the recovery process. Training of local staff continues so the island will be prepared for future disasters.
Red Cross Worker Returns Home For
Funerals and Gives Back to Her Community
She lives thousands of miles away from her family, but she had to go back for the funerals—all of them. Her brother’s, her uncle’s, and all of the cousins from her mother’s side. Funerals for 13 members of her family—all killed in the tsunami that swept American Samoa and the neighboring nation of Samoa on the afternoon of Sept. 29.
She wept and shared memories and hugs with her surviving relatives. But after the funerals, when it was time to go home to Hawaii, she called her husband and child to say she wouldn’t be coming back yet. She had work to do.
So Alofa Ofagalilo, who has worked for the American Red Cross in Hawaii for five years, put on a red-and-white vest and joined the more than 300 Red Cross workers who have been on American Samoa for three weeks, bringing supplies and comfort to those who lost homes and family members in the waves.
“I’m seeing a lot of people in need,” said Ofagalilo. “The island is total mess. In some villages, people have been totally wiped out. But everybody is helping each other. They really uplift each other and anything you can do to help–shake their hand, hug them–it helps.”
With her own grief still raw, Ofagalilo is working in the field and with the American Red Cross disaster services in Pago Pago, translating for American Samoan families who speak more comfortably in Samoan. She is a native of independent Samoa, formerly known as Western Samoa, and her husband is from American Samoa. “I learned Samoan when I was very young,” Ofagalilo said. “I can translate what help the family needs.”
She is also providing a diplomatic service on an island that values tradition, honor and respect:
“You have to say a person’s name correctly,” she said. “We have our own Samoan vowel; it is like an apostrophe when you speak, a pause.”
Her own first name contains one of those verbal apostrophes, and when an “off-islander” tried the pause, Ofagalilo laughed—a good sound to hear. But her pain is close to the surface. Asked how she works under the weight of losing so much of her family, she wells up.
“It’s hard for me to think about it,” she said. “I don’t really like to think about it….The Red Cross has been my immediate family for this difficult time.”
In Hawaii, she teaches CPR and First Aid for the American Red Cross—“I love what I do, teaching in the community,” she said—and she will return to that work soon. But not too soon. “Going home can wait,” she said. “This was my opportunity to help the people. I’m not going to sit around and feel sorry for me and my family. We are all Samoans. If I help these people, anybody on this island is my family.”
UPS and the American Red Cross Team Up to Send Relief
Flight to American Samoa Members of the Red Cross Annual Disaster Giving Program Provide Support
WASHINGTON, Thursday, October 22, 2009 — UPS is delivering 70 tons of food and relief supplies to communities affected by the earthquake and tsunami in American Samoa, as a UPS relief flight has delivered the first payload to assist the ongoing recovery efforts, with additional supplies scheduled to arrive in November by ocean freight.
The shipments by UPS, which is a member of the Annual Disaster Giving Program of the American Red Cross, are supporting the ongoing relief efforts of the Red Cross in American Samoa in the aftermath of the earthquake and tsunami that struck on September 29. When disaster strikes, the Red Cross mobilizes volunteers and supplies into affected areas to shelter, feed and provide mental health counseling to disaster victims and emergency personnel.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009 — On Saturday, American Red Cross Jumpstart Kits arrived in American Samoa, an area that is recovering from the September 29 tsunami. The kit has items to help disaster victims with their short-term, immediate requirements, as well as aid for the long term. Each kit contains two blankets, a combination hand-crank radio, flashlight and cell phone charger, a mesh laundry bag, a first aid kit, note pad and pen, work gloves, face masks and a bath-in-a-bag all in one convenient, durable Red Cross backpack.
The American Red Cross has teamed with partner organizations to specifically address the needs of children after disasters, whether those needs are for physical safety, specialized food and clothing, or attention to mental health and spiritual care. On American Samoa, the Red Cross and Save the Children—a partner organization for more than two years—stocked and staffed a “Safe Space” play area in the convention center where families lined up to apply for assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Catholic Charities, a long-time partner of the Red Cross, is sorting and distributing clothing donations. Red Cross workers are working to repackage specialty supplies that arrived Saturday evening, including diapers, baby formula, school supplies and Mickey Mouse dolls.
And with members of the faith-based community on American Samoa, Red Cross specialists in mental health and spiritual care are working with children—from preschool to high school—to deal with the losses of family members and classmates who were among the reported 34 killed in the tsunami.
The American Red Cross took delivery of 122 pallets of supplies for residents of American Samoa, who are still working to recover from the Sept. 29 tsunami that killed a reported 34 people and damaged or destroyed hundreds of homes.
The supplies that arrived Saturday evening included diapers, baby formula, towels, brooms and feminine hygiene products—all of which are in short supply on the island. The delivery included bolts of fabric that could be cut into lava-lava—the traditional skirt-like garment that is worn by men and women on American Samoa.
More than 300 workers from the American Red Cross, representing chapters on American Samoa, Hawaii and across the U.S. mainland, are at work on American Samoa to provide assistance to those affected by the tsunami. The workers will distribute the new supplies to villages across American Samoa, along with tuna, rice, noodles and water.
“People here have temporary housing and cots and cooking utensils, so we’re providing food supplies that will allow them to cook at home,” said Red Cross worker Bob Howard.
Donations to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund enable the Red Cross to purchase needed supplies at the best price possible and deliver them as efficiently as possible to those affected by all disasters.
In 40 years of marriage, Leonard Watts calculates that he’s spent no more than three weeks at a time away from his wife, Vicki. That’s why, he said, he and Vicki are on American Samoa with the American Red Cross—their eighth assignment together as volunteers in Red Cross disaster services.
“It’s enjoyable to have her around,” Leonard, 67, said in an interview from American Samoa, where he has been working with the mass care component of disaster services, acquiring supplies and repackaging them to help the families affected by the Sept. 29 tsunami.
And, as a partner in a 40-year marriage, Vicki, 61, offered a slightly different take on working as a couple: “Sometimes it’s helpful; sometimes it’s not. Sometimes one of us can do something the other can’t. We like to help each other.”
On their first assignment together in northern Florida in September 2004, responding to Hurricane Francis—one of four hurricanes to strike Florida that year—Leonard’s commercial driving license earned him a place behind the wheel of an emergency response vehicle—the familiar red-and-white trucks that ply stricken neighborhoods, distributing food and water. On this job, while Leonard works in bulk distribution, Vicki has gone house to house in American Samoa, collecting information on family size and needs.
“The ones we’ve gone to have lost everything—their clothes are gone; their house is totally gone,” Vicki said. “Sometimes, the water was 10-feet high. Some of the families’ belongings were sucked back into the ocean; some were left in the house with mud.”
From their own home in Utah and their base with the Mountain Valley Red Cross chapter in Provo—Team Watts has traveled to Florida, New Jersey, Texas and, now, American Samoa. Leonard has become recognizable along the way for the big white cowboy hat he wears during his work for the American Red Cross.
The assignment to American Samoa “is the most different” of the couple’s assignments as Red Cross volunteers, Leonard said, but he’s not hanging up his hat: “We’ve done a lot,” he said. “We’d like to do a lot more.”
On that, Vicki was in 100 percent agreement: “If we don’t get to go with the Red Cross sometimes, we feel real bad, because we want to go….Hardships happen, but you look forward to the work….We enjoy it. It’s a rewarding experience….We learn more and gain more than we put out.”
Nurse Donna Goldsworthy was among the first American Red Cross workers to arrive on American Samoa—a volunteer whose service was inspired, she said, by the assistance the Red Cross provided after the Loma Prieta earthquake of 1989. “I’ve been an earthquake victim myself,” she said in a recent interview from American Samoa. “The Red Cross has been an encouraging influence on my life. I wanted to be a part of them, and so did my family. My sister is a Red Cross trainer, and my father recently had to quit the local disaster response team. He’s 85; now, he works at Red Cross blood drives.”
Goldsworthy is among more than 300 American Red Cross workers—from chapters in American Samoa, Hawaii and the U.S. mainland—working on American Samoa with the thousands of families whose homes were damaged or destroyed by the Sept. 29 tsunami. She and her family are among thousands of people who have been personally affected by disasters, such as the Loma Prieta earthquake, where they have seen the American Red Cross at work—and then been inspired to join that work.
For Goldsworthy, of Hilo, Hawaii, that meant stepping up her training as a nurse and signing up as a Red Cross volunteer in 2000. “I was in Texas last year after Hurricane Ike, working in two different shelters,” Goldsworthy said. “Here on American Samoa, we are out in the field, going from house to house…. Every time we go out to a village, they’re looking better and better….
“I will be here until I’m no longer needed; I’m in for the duration,” Goldsworthy said. “I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing.”
Tim Serban offers a hug and emotional support to tsunami victim Taitasi Fitao. Serban is the volunteer spiritual care adviser among the 88 American Red Cross workers who flew to American Samoa to help with recovery from the tsunami. While his fellow Red Cross workers assist with residents’ physical recovery from the tsunami, Serban and his partners in Red Cross mental health are addressing the psychological and spiritual needs of the residents. Their work as part of Red Cross Disaster Services is supported by donations to the Disaster Relief Fund of the American Red Cross.
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