American Samoa has been declared tsumani ready by the Federal Emergency Management Agency FEMA.
On the third anniversary of the 2009 tsumani that killed 34 people and caused millions of dollars damage FEMA has awarded around one hundred million US dollars for post tsumani imporvements for American Samoa.
Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Nancy Ward, Regional Administrator for FEMA Region 9
WARD: Basically a ceremony for the National Weather Service presents American Samoa with the official designation of being tsunami ready.
COUTTS: And what are the criteria that they have to adhere to to be deemed tsunami ready?
WARD: They have to be able to establish a 24-hour warning point and an Emergency Operation Centre, they have to develop multiple ways to receive tsunami warnings and to be able to alert the public. They have to develop a formal tsunami hazard plan and do Outreach about that plan with their citizenry and then they have to conduct emergency exercises and promote public awareness and readiness throughout their community education programs.
COUTTS: And that includes sirens, because we know in the last warning, that some worked, some didn’t work and some just didn’t hear them?
WARD: That’s correct, and what FEMA has assisted the territory in doing is procuring a new early warning siren system.
COUTTS: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has awarded nearly 100 million dollars in post-tsunami improvements to American Samoa. Has the money been used in all these things you’ve just outlined or will it go to do other things?
WARD: Yes, some of the money has been used in the tsunami-ready activities that they were required to do, but a lot of it was disaster reconstruction types of funding, rebuilding their infrastructure. Some of the money went to, we build 39 homes for individual families; we provided assistance to individuals and households who may have lost maybe not only just the structure that they were living in, but they lost their personal property. They had medical types of injuries, may have lost a car, those kinds of things. So the money was spent in many various different ways.
2011 ABC