15 Dec Kotu Town Officer remains grateful after HTHH disaster
2022/02/21- Saturday evening 15th January I was sweeping at home when I heard the first explosion. I ran to turn on the radio and I heard the tsunami emergency for everyone to evacuate. I called my neighbors and children for us to run to our plantation.
As we drove out we called to everyone to evacuate and told one of my daughters to go down to the seaside to tell the people there to evacuate. We all gathered to the higher ground. At the time of the evacuation there was one elderly woman who could not be found so I came with my son to find her. We found her at her kitchen sitting by the radio praying.
We brought her up to where we gathered up to the hill, we said prayers that evening grateful that we were all alive. Then the rocks started to rain, the ash and like the radio said it was 12 hours. We stayed there Saturday night, only one stretch of tarp in about an 8 foot home where we packed the elderly and the children while the rest of us remained outside.
When the waves seemed to recede I came down to the town with youths to collect some more tarps from nearby homes. Sunday morning, we came down to our town to see it was heartbreaking. We stood in homes where the sea water reached up to our necks.
From the town boundary to the other end of the islands towards the Fotuha’a island, there was no house left undamaged by tsunami because the waves came from both sides of the island. Four homes were totally damaged, others are damaged from sea water, everything in the homes are damaged and unusable.
All the boats are no longer operable, all but one motor are damaged. All boats damaged. All the livestock, it wasn’t until 4 days that they started to show up. It wasn’t until 2 weeks until we returned down to the town.
Three weeks on and we are still cleaning up, visitors here bringing aid or surveys can see we still have a lot of work to do.
Our immediate needs are boats, communications are down because of the internet so we need the boat in case someone is ill or injured. There has been no injury or loss of life in the event. During this time we have been helped by neighboring boats for our needs. What little crops we harvested will see us to the end of this month maybe 2 weeks next month. We had hoped the root crops would see us through in coming months but the crops are all damaged.
Despite it all I am grateful that there were no lives lost and I want you all to see that we are doing well.
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