National Park of American Samoa Tsunami Update, October 7, 2009
Operations Section Chief Steve Klump is greeted by village children while checking in with an NPS crew assisting in debris removal at Le'atele Elementary School in Fagasa. NPS photo.
The National Park of American Samoa, supported by the Western Incident Management Team (Denny Ziemann, IC), continues to aid partner villages in recovery efforts following the tsunami that struck the island on September 29th. Crews totaling up to 50 staff and volunteers are working to remove debris from homes, roads and schools in five villages. The critical incident stress management team has contacted all of the park crews and some of their immediate family members. They continue to provide information and education on coping strategies for these types of incidents. By Thursday of this week, they will have had an opportunity to talk to more than 70 park staff. The families on the island are very close knit and their support of each other is encouraging to the peer support team. On Tuesday, the cultural resource team was medically cleared and fitted for respiratory protection for mold and other airborne contaminants that they may encounter inside the visitor center. The cultural resource team is working inside the building to inventory and remove herbarium specimens and archeological collections. Confined space monitoring conducted by the National Guard returned negative results for hazardous materials inside the building.
