austraLasia #2518

Salesian Sister describes events in Samoa
  (The following item draws its material from the Brisbane Times, in Australia, and based on an Australia Associated Press report. It has been embellished with additional information)

LEAUVA'A: 5th Ocotber 2009 -- Sr Doris Barbero is a Salesian Sister stationed at the Samoan Parish of Leauva'a. The parish has a Salesian parish priest, Fr John Walenciej, a Polish Salesian missionary.  The Sisters' arrival in Leauva'a predated that of the Salesians. They have been running the Primary School there almost since the time they first arrived in Samoa nearly 30 years ago.
    It was breakfast time at Leauva'a when the 'quake struck. "We felt it very strongly. We heard it coming too", she said. Earthquakes are not a surprise in Samoa; there are often little tremblers felt, most barely noticeable, but this one was strongly felt. The nation and its schools have their drills for such events. The first thing is to get people to higher ground. This time the warning bells were heard (literally - it is part of the system introduced in recent years, especially since the disastrous 2004 earthquake and tsunami in the Indian ocean. Everyone knows that island nations are most at risk in these cases).
    Sr Doris, two other Sisters and the 11 lay staff helped move some 320 children from age 4-15 to a plantation area higher above the school. The school is in fact located just metres from the lagoon. The reef enclosing the lagoon is no protection.  Much of the land behind the school is land reclaimed anyway.  As it happened, that part of the coastline, not far from the airport, was not badly hit by the resulting tsunami which obliterated entire villages at the other end of the island near Lalomanu. Lalomanu itself lost 46 people, 25 of them children.  There was little warning in this latter case - the time between the earthquake and the tsunami simply did not allow people to flee. But certainly the prompt action by Sr Doris and her staff to move the children would have been a key preventive factor had things been different in Leauva'a.  People from the village remained on higher ground for two days following the events. The children are now back at school.
    The AAP reporter asked Sr Doris if she thought the events were to do with divine intervention. She rejected that idea: "I think it' a natural disaster," she said, "I wouldn't see it as a work of God. We're not being punished. We can speculate a lot but deep down we don't really know why this sort of thing happens. We know natural disasters and sometimes man-made ones cause deaths and accidents. I think you just take life as it comes. We can't always regulate everything so we should try to be optimistic wherever we are."
    Church services were held in the Samoas and neighbouring Tonga on Sunday to remember the more than 190 people who died, with several hundred still unaccounted for. The Salesians are particularly mindful of the loss of Brother Nuku's mother in the Niua islands of Tonga, bordering Samoa.
    For a further eyewitness account, if you have not already seen it, go to Fr Nick's blog entry, which has already received hundreds of hits, or read further reports in the Salesian Sisters' Pacific region  website.

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Title: australasia 2518
Subject and key words: Salesian Family: Sr Doris in Samoa
Date (year): 2009
ID: 2000-2099|2518