Pacific Calling - Samoa Tsunami

The Pacific Calling Partnership extends its heartfelt concern to the people of American Samoa, Samoa and all other islands in the Pacific that have felt the effects of the tsunami. The tsunami has killed fourteen in American Samoa and five in Samoa according to our news reports at the moment. This is only part of the tragedy. People have had to rush in fear from the coast, they have lost homes and other structures and most of all they have experienced a most terrible fear.
May they have all the support they need form the international community as they face the aftermath.
*Below you can read emails* I received this morning from Pelenise in Kiribati and Tafue in Tuvalu as they faced the fear and uncertainty of whether the tsunami would come to their islands or not. We all know that for low lying islands there is little they can do in the face of a tsunami. There is no higher ground to go to. It is hard for us to imagine the fear that people on low lying islands experience knowing that they have no higher ground. I received a phone call and Maria has received many phone calls this morning from people who have described the panick that Kiribati is experiencing as people try to find structures that are higher, try to move the sick and the children who have all been kept home from school.
*A tsunami is an act of nature we cannot stop it but climate change is an act of we selfish industrialised countries* *and we can and must do our best to curtail it.* We in the Pacific Calling Partnership are thinking of our friends in the Pacific as you face the immediate fear of the tsunami. We feel for you as face everything that the tsunami has brought with it.
We are also very concerned bobut our neighbours in the Pacific as you face the long term uncertainty of climate change. We in the Pacific Calling Partnership are doing all we can to get the global community to minimise climate change.
May God Bless you all. You are in our prayers Jill

*
From: Pelenise Alofa in KIRIBATI*

> To all my friends.....for Climate Change!
>
> News came this morning to say that tsunami may come to Kiribati. It
> will hit Fiji, Tuvalu and come this way to Tarawa and Christmas
> Island. Some schools have closed...workers returned home to be with their families.
> What are the people going to do? Most of Bairiki is closed. May be we
> just have to return home and stay together to die?
>
> Well, if this is true then this may be my last letter to you all and I
> thank you for your friendship and Climate Change is definitely HERE.
> We cannot continue to deny it unless we are STUPID! Just seeing FEAR
> in the faces of people and hearing FEAR in the voices makes me very
> sad and wish that our world leaders could put aside their ambitions,
> greed, selfishness and whatever and be strong to stand to do the RIGHT.
>
> God bless you all and
>
*From Tafue in Tuvalu*
> Thank you Pelenise for that, Tuvalu woke up this morning to the same
> warning, schools were closed and people felt that inevitable fear in
> their hearts knowing that if it happens there is no hope of survival.
>
> Thank God for divine intervention it missed us and went on to New Zealand.
> I believe it has also passed Kiribati, so let us be thankful for that
> intervention, but let us all together do our part in fighting this
> problem of Climate Change.
>
> Tiabo mai Tuvalu





--

Jill Finnane Eco-Justice Program Coordinator

*Edmund Rice Centre** *15 Henley Rd Flemington - PO Box 2219 Homebush West 2140**

Ph: 02 8762 4200 www.erc.org.au
*Think before you print*