For the next two weeks, our blog will post a special series of e-mails from Richard Rieckenberg, a Red Cross Disaster Volunteer who spent several weeks in American Samoa after the devastating earthquake and tsunami hit in late September.

 

Richard lives in New Mexico (and has an incredible digital photography business), but has formed friendships with Red Crossers from all over, including Dan and Lois Flippen in Kirkwood. Dan kindly asked if our Chapter could publish Richard’s emails from “the front lines” of an international disaster operation.

 

Richard agreed, and said for him, writing these emails to friends back home was therapeutic. “There is a lot of pain and sadness in an operation,” he said. “But we are humans with free will and we can choose whether we wish to dwell on the pain and sadness or whether we choose to dwell on those moments that give us hope and courage. My intent in writing those e-mails was not to give a glimpse as to what a day was like. It was to show that we have a choice as to how we view each day and there are always things that make us strong.”

 

With that, please enjoy this series. We will post one e-mail a day for the next nine days (excluding weekends). Leave a comment for Richard if you choose.

 

Hello everyone,

 

I got my first chance to sleep for more than a few hours today and my first chance to get on the e-mail. We are in a small community near the airport. It is very hot directly under the sun but kind of pleasant in the shade when the trade winds are blowing. The nights are warm but it is easy to sleep.

 

Another earthquake hit the Solomon Islands on Wednesday with a reading of 8.1 on the richter scale and we had to evacuate to high ground when a tsunami warning was issued. Communication on the island is very difficult, so I had to go out in a car to find all of my teams working in the field to make sure they were aware of the warning. We rounded them all up and sent them to our rendezvous site at our shelter. While we were there one of the Samoan men dropped off his six children with us so he could go back out to find his wife. He knew we would look after them. I talked to our two local volunteers who were uneasy about where we were so I ended up leading two rickety busses and several cars to the top of a mountain that overlooked the island with the children and as many other Samoans as we could. Here we stopped at the top of a chief’s pavillion, which is a large, open air structure. The Samoans sat us down in the chief’s house (you are not allowed to stand except to walk in). They started to sing a prayer for the lives and souls of those who were still in harm’s way. They sang beautifully. It was a tremendously moving experience. In many ways they are an amazing and wonderful people. Fortunately the tsunami did not hit – it would have been a heart-wrenching experience – and we went back down the mountain. I had been at work for sixteen consecutive days at that point and was so exhausted after I returned to our headquarters that I could barely walk.

 

I thank each of you for your friendship over the years and I wish each of you the best. I hope to be done here and back to New Mexico by 29 October (or so). There are two flights off of the island each week so if I miss that one it will take me into early November.

 

Best wishes and many blessings,

Richard