Tsunami horrors remain vivid
SILI Apelu rebuilt his resort on the water’s edge of the south Samoan coast within months after a monster wave ripped it to shreds in the deadly 2009 tsunami.
It looks almost exactly the same as before, but nothing in Lalomanu will ever be the same again.
Apelu has ventured into the sea only twice since September 29, 2009, the fateful day which claimed 14 of his family members, including his eldest grandchild and his father-inlaw, whom the resort is named after.
‘‘Not that I’m afraid of something. I’ve just lost interest in the sea.’’
Across the road from the Taufua Beach Fales resort is an empty plot, where Apelu’s house once stood.
His house, like everything in the village, was destroyed, turned into debris, which floated above his head as he was encompassed in two metres of water, and which he later found strewn across the landscape.
Earthquakes aren’t uncommon in Samoa, but they’re hardly felt on the southern coast. The one that struck that morning was violent and rumbled on and on.
Apelu was still in bed when it struck and thought someone was shaking his bed in an attempt to wake him up. He woke up straight away when he realised there was nobody else in the room.
He could see the water in the lagoon, and frantically typed in the US Geological Survey URL to see if a tsunami warning had been issued.
‘‘When I looked up there was no water, but a sucking sound.’’
Within minutes the wave had started forming beyond the reef and people were running.
Some climbed on top of a truck, which was picked up by the wave and tossed as if it was as light as a ping-pong ball.
Many, including his 97-year-old bedridden father-in-law, two of his employees and two New Zealand sisters staying at the resort, were later found dead.
Apelu ran to his house, on the way picking up his four-year-old nephew, who was standing lost on the road, but it was too late. He turned around, put his back against the house and took a deep breath as the first wave crashed over him.
‘‘We had barbed wires for our pigsty and I think that’s what locked me, which was in fact a blessing in disguise because it kind of locked me there.
‘‘Many of the people who drifted away were found three days later.
‘‘When the first wave hit because I was locked I couldn’t get myself out, I thought [my nephew] would be safe if I released him,’’ he says softly and slowly.
‘‘He was four but because they live on the beach they can swim, do things kids do, so I thought if I let him go he would find the surface, but unfortunately there was a second wave and I was told it was bigger than the first one. They found him on the third day.’’
Apelu and his wife Tai spent six weeks in hospital, where they planned the rebuild of their resort.
Tourists have slowly returned, but some areas in Samoa are still struggling nearly three years on.
Tuatagaloa Joe Annandale’s home is one of only three in Poutasi that have been rebuilt in the same place. Everyone else has moved inland.
‘‘I love my little spot here,’’ the village chief and owner of the Sinalei Reef resort, says of his home which literally sits on the water’s edge – he fishes off the deck.
Annandale and his late wife Tui were saying their morning prayers when the ground rumbled underneath them.
They watched as the sea flowed in the opposite direction, the reef became visible and fish flapped around with no water beneath them. They rushed to their car. ‘‘We just backed out and we saw this huge wave rolling in and we knew then we were in trouble.’’
It was either quick or ‘‘hopeful thinking’’ to drive behind a neighbour’s house hoping it would block the tsunami, but the house instead crumbled on top of them and the tsunami lifted the vehicle.
‘‘The rest is history. My wife didn’t make it, my mother-in-law didn’t make it.’’
Annandale says he no longer fears the sea. ‘‘It’s taken a while. But whenever there is another tremor I’ll be the first one out of here.’’