Letter From Chicken Of The Sea: Urgent Request for Donations for COSI Tsunami Victims

Tony Feist Forwarded this email to me.  I wanted to share it with all of you.

Chicken of the Sea Family:

As most of you have heard by now, there was an 8.0 earthquake in the ocean near American Samoa, which then resulted in a tsunami that hit the Samoan islands.  I was here in American Samoa, and my wife had just joined me a few days earlier.  I would like to share with you our experience here that day.

Mona and I were in American Samoa on Sept 29, 2009.  We live in a cedar house near the golf course that is a COSI company house and has been for 30 years.  It is a kit built house from the States and is built on wooden piling.  At 06:49 we were eating a bagel when the house started shaking, badly.  We looked at each other and said earthquake.  The earth quake continued so we left the house ASAP, down a shaking staircase.  It was still shaking when we got outside.  We don’t have many neighbors we can see, but the ones we could see were outside as well. This is only the 2nd time in my short life that I have left a building for an earthquake and the other time was a 7.9 earthquake in Rabaul, New Guinea.  Pretty much scared the dickens out of us.

I called the GM at the factory to see if all of the workers were OK and he reported that all of the workers were evacuated and up on the hill side away from any tsunami danger.  He told me the water receded and then started to rise.  It rose to the top of the seawall where the mgmt parks their cars.  The water covered our fish unloading dock, and a bit got into the cold storage, but the factory itself suffered no damage.  We do have an outside warehouse toward Pago Pago, just across from the shipyard that did suffered damage, and all of the dry packaging goods- labels, cardboard, etc, are a total loss as the water came into the building thru a broken wall.

Both canneries are OK, but not operating because of a lack of electricity.  The tsunami crested the seawall near the Satala power plant, and the power plant got wet- distribution boards, gensets, alternators, etc.    This power plant feeds both canneries and the east side of the island.  So there is no power and no electricity for the east side, and no tuna production.  FEMA and others are trying to rush in gensets for the population, but it will be a bit of time before the canneries get full power.  COSI has operation gensets, so we are able to keep our cold storages cold, and do some cleanup, but cannot operate all of the machinery it takes to run a big factory

I tried to go to work about 7:20 but got turned around by the police because of the tsunami warning.  Little did I/we know of the destruction on Pago Pago.  About 11 am the tsunami warning was lifted, but the road thru Pago Pago was completely blocked with cars, boats and debris.  Amazingly, by 3 pm, the people in Pago Pago had cleared the road and we were able to drive to work.  Still lots and lots of cleaning up to do.

We lost all of the fish, that we were working, which was 3 Shifts worth – cleaning day shift, cooking night shift, and thawing the final day’s fish.

Pago Pago is pretty much destroyed.  If you know the downtown area, the destruction extends from the post office in Fagatogo thru to the shipyard near the factories, perhaps 2 miles by road.  The tip of Pago Pago harbor is the tip of a large funnel, so the water concentrated in Pago Pago.  Spences store, Kruses store, Steve and sons store  are all gone.  The old high court building has a car sticking out of the 2nd floor.  There are plenty of sailboats on land, plenty of buses destroyed and  plenty of cars destroyed.  I don’t know the islands death toll as yet, but I just found out as I was leaving work, that we lost 2 Sampac employees.  They were in a bus going home from the 3rd shift, and got caught in the bus by the wave.  I also just found out that another 2 employees were in a bus that was washed towards a tree, and got lodged in the tree.  They were able to walk away, but with wet clothes.

Sampac is donating 4000 manhours and pallets of tuna to help with the cleanup and feeding the cleanup crews.

I have also learned that members of our COSI Family in the corporate office also lost members of their family and other members of their family had severe damage to their homes and some even lost their entire homes.

For those of you who have not yet seen the devastation the tsunami has left,  here are posted some photos on these 2 sites.

http://s300.photobucket.com/albums/nn2/Jellyrug/?newest=1

http://s634.photobucket.com/albums/uu67/jdebeer/

In the wake of this tragedy Chicken of the Sea is not only trying to take stock of the devastation this tragedy has left, but we are also trying to help the island and our own COSI family members who have been personally affected by this tragedy.  Executive management has authorized thousands of man hours to help in the cleanup effort and will also be donating fish.

I would like to appeal to all of the members of our Chicken of the Sea family to help the members of our COSI family who have been personally affected by this tragedy.  A fund is being established to help these COSI families.  I would like to ask every member of the COSI family to make a personal contribution to this fund.  A senior member of the COSI management has stepped up and offered to match the amount of funds raised, up to $5,000.  While I realize that some may be able to contribute more than others, even a small contribution will go a long way to help these families.  So please take a moment to really think about this tragedy and how much your heartfelt contribution can help members of our COSI family.

Coordination of the donations as well as the disbursement of the funds to the families will be handled by the Operations department.  Contributions can be made in all forms of payment and will be coordinated by my assistant Angela Monforte.

Thank you for all of your hard work, dedication and support as our COSI Family gets through this challenging time.

John DeBeer

Vice President, Operations

Tags: American Samoa, Chicken of the Sea, Samoa, Tony Feist, tsunami, Tuna Support