ICS-CG   2:22   February 25, 2009

Screen:
The Incident Command System (ICS) proved its ability to bring order out of chaos after an earthquake and tsunami struck American Samoa on September 29, 2009.

Overlay:
Lt. Ted Harre
Detachment Supervisor
U.S. Coast Guard, American Samoa

Harre:
I went back down to the water's edge. I saw it coming pretty high. And of course everyone was screaming from the land because they could see it. And so I ran up the mountain over here. And up there's where I knew I was going to be safe. And it hit again. It was a tragic situation. But we, we helped out everyone we could on the way, but I made it to my office. We decided that we had to assess the port, the ships that are involved, that are in the port, you know, and making sure that was clear. And then we had to get to the Emergency Command Center.  We knew, we knew that more waves were coming. We knew that it was going to be more but in the Coast Guard its only; the Coast Guard is all about saving people. That's all we do. We don't know. It's, it's, you know, like a fireman or a police officer. If there's trouble you run toward trouble. You don't run away from trouble.

Overlay:
PO1 Peter Glenn Anderson
U.S. Coast Guard, Marine Science Technician

Anderson:
Well once it came, I kinda, you know my eyes got big and I watched it come and hit the parking lot and it just started out slow and the next thing you know it took out every car in the parking lot and threw them all in the ditch and out further. It was very quick that the water height reached to the second floor. So about after about the third wave, we went out, myself and some of the other people, some of the parks service guys. We started doing search and rescue type stuff, looking for people. There was a few people injured that we just kind of helped get to higher ground, but it was mostly that you just found people that had drowned. It really wasn't until our C-130 came down that night with the Governor and our C.O., the Captain of the Port at Sector Honolulu, and along with FEMA personnel and other Coast Guard personnel from the IMAT Team who are, that's what they do a lot of times, they fly out to incidents and they set up the ICS system. And once they came in they were able to really establish it and everything started to feel good again. And the Incident Command System provides that, you know, and its set up to function in any type of operation, whether its oil spill, tsunami, you know, hurricane.

Screen:
www.fema.gov

http://www.fema.gov/emergency/nims/
IncidentCommandSystem.shtm

Disaster aftermath video courtesy
KVZK-TV American Samoa