Merritt Burch submitted her account of the tsunami in American Samoa to The Foothills Focus
~ 10/21/2009~

The now 13-year-old attended New River Elementary up until the fourth grade and was back again for sixth grade, before spending the last couple years being home-schooled on the family’s sailboat.

As she explains, “Sometimes I learn how to dissect reef fish, other times I learn to sail, but most times I learn out of text books we purchase off the internet or ones we traded a bag of ice for.”

Below is her account of the family’s recent ordeal.

What was that vibration? We looked at our friend’s yacht that was rafted next to us in Pago Pago Harbor. Did he have his engine on? What were the low pitched sounds we were feeling through the deck of Sunshine, our sailboat home of the last five years. After a minute the vibration stopped and my father decided to look on the internet to see if we’d just experienced an earthquake while on mooring.

The earthquake website didn’t say anything about any recent earthquakes in the south Pacific, but when he clicked back to the website a minute later there was a large red square on the map near American Samoa. It said a 7.9 magnitude earthquake just occurred. Dad clicked to the tsunami warning center website. The site said there had been an earthquake nearby, but there were no tsunami warnings.

The trembling had been intense and had lasted a long time. I was still worried. We calculated how fast a tsunami wave might take to get here if it traveled at maybe 600 miles per hour, ”Fifteen minutes”, Dad said.

At that very moment the wind suddenly and strongly changed direction. “Cut off all lines!” Dad yelled, but then the water was churning and spinning us and the mooring line had fouled around our rudder and propeller. We were helpless.

Dad said “put on your life jackets”.

The next second the sea level dropped ten feet. The water drew out to sea so fast that it created an outgoing wave that struck us. Millions of gallons of water were leaving the bay. The outgoing wave traveled 100 yards and joined a massive incoming surge of water. Quickly we put on our life jackets and held on.

An eight-foot and growing wave grabbed us and pushed us toward the usually small stream that flowed from the village at the end of the valley. Our two yachts must have been moving at ten knots or more. I heard many snapping noises as we flew over and through trees. A small bridge was swept away just before we reached it.

I looked up and saw a telephone wire had knocked down our mast and it was dragging in the water right next to the boat. Everything in our path from telephone poles, cars and even a Chinese grocery store fell before us and the wave. Our compression post ripped out from the ceiling and the bilge and was bent in the letter C. Our radar arch was snapped off and our wind generator and solar panels fell. Slowly we came to a stop.

As the water drained back into the ocean I saw that we were in a parking lot for a Mormon church. A woman clinging to a bush was saying prayers and holding on for her life as the water was now beginning to recede. The water was filled with an incredible array of debris. Floating store bought goods, clothing, branches and parts of buildings were piled up. When the water was low enough we climbed down from Sunshine, now lying on her side on the drying parking lot.

Samoans filled the streets asking if we had seen their brothers or sisters. We ran up to higher ground. Another smaller wave came. The anchorage was now filled with drifting fishing vessels, and sailboats heading for deeper water. From our safer vantage point on a hill above the bay we saw people running down the streets. Some were looking for lost loved ones and some were looting. Some broke windows in the stores.

After about a half hour we decided to go down to the boat and salvage our belongings. Most of the water had drained back out to sea. From where we had been moored we must have traveled a mile inland. There were cars upside down with telephone poles shoved into the windows. There were 150 pound tunas lying in the street, the cold storage building had been swept away.

When we got back to our own boat there were already people inside her passing out our belongings.

“Hey! Get away from there” Dad yelled.

One Samoan popped his heads up and said, “Uh, yeah, I look for dead people.”

They ran away quickly and I grabbed a bag of our belongings out of the Samoans hands.
In every experience you learn something. This time I’ve discovered that disasters can bring out the best and worst behaviors in people, and I’ve learned to not necessarily depend on tsunami warning websites, civil defense sirens, or news bulletins to tell me what to do, but to trust my senses and intuition. If there’s a next time, I’ll put to sea the moment I feel an earthquake and wait for emergency directions in deep water.

Those interested in contacting the family can do so at wavesails@netzero.net.