Disaster agency encourages American Samoa to build high

Updated October 29, 2009 08:05:08

Apart from the political issues dogging the American Samoan government, emergency management authorities on the ground there are asking the Governor to consider moving some villages away from the shoreline. The Federal Emergency Management Agency in American Samoa wants some of the villages which were hard hit by the September tsunami to be relocated. FEMA officials believe the move is necessary to prevent further loss of life and property.

Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: James Shebl, external affairs officer with FEMA

SHEBL: Well the response of the people and the government has been extraordinary, they're not only willing but very able partners in this recovery activity, and that's the way our recovery work is designed. To date we have let's see, let me get you some numbers, close to six-thousand families have registered for FEMA grants. The grants include temporary housing and individual home repair, we've put out one-point-two million dollars on that program. We have many people still in camps and we're upgrading the camps because of the season and the promise of what may come, but we have a housing cash force that we've established with the government, and they're in the process of coming to closure on exactly what they want us to support, what kind of facility. And the minute we get that decision approved by the Governor, that recommendation approved by the Governor, we will begin facilitating it immediately.

COUTTS: But what actually happened? I mean how many villages for instance are we talking about? And what area of coastline was affected most?

SHEBL: Well this is what's extraordinary. The tsunami came in to Pago Pago harbour and made the elbow turn at the end and followed the landscape up about a quarter of a mile doing considerably more damage than it even did along the coast. But I've been to both ends of the island and I'll tell you even all four sides if you were to divide it by directions, you can find destruction, and I'm talking to our tsunami experts and they're trying to figure out exactly how this happened, instead of just one side of the island. So that's under study by the National Science Foundation and the US Geologic Survey and the Tsunami Warning Centre out of Honolulu.

COUTTS: Okay the 34 people who were killed they were in that area presumably. But your prime concern is getting agreement to relocate some villagers. How many, and how many families and people will that involve?

SHEBL: The government has yet to be specific in those terms. We're given the official officials and the territory officials studied opinion on the relocation. Of course you know you're fighting a lot of history, a lot of cultural traditions here. You're not fighting them but you're flying in the face of them. And they'll be concern on the part of the villagers, so we'll have to put together a discussion and an argument that the village chief will be able to deliver to his residents along the coast.

COUTTS: Well you're a federal organisation and we understand that you've inherited a bit of a mess from the previous administration, is that something that will detain you for a while, because I read that FEMA will stay in American Samoa a lot longer than they previously anticipated?

SHEBL: We always stay at the scene of the disaster until our work is done and there's no difference here. We'll be here until spring because of the infrastructure issues that we have to resolve and study, and the history of what went on before is of little influence to us as we move forward with the government now.