Tropical Cyclone 15F - Rene

Here is some feedback from our island residents.

“Really windy and heavy rains,” said Lavata’i, “everyone’s house is boarded up...we’re okay.” - Ta'u Island

“I feel like Pago is having such bad luck...first the tsunami...it’s super super windy out there,” said one motorist from Faga’alu who drove through Pago in the morning. “The kids are getting antsy...they’re getting scared...when this thing is going to hit us...we’re just sitting and waiting.”

“The kids are okay, they’re young so they really don’t understand...everybody seems calm, the windows are boarded up. I guess it’s the same like every other hurricane,” an Utulei mother said around 1 p.m. “The wind comes and it’s really cold and it goes and there’s heavy winds and then the next thing there’s no wind at all.”

“We got our batteries for our lights...a gas stove so we don’t have to worry about a power outage if we have to cook...I did all my laundry...everything that might blow away has been tied down,” the mother added. ”Other than that, we’re just waiting.”

“It’s calm over here...a little bit windy, the usual bad weather...we have the boys boarding up the houses and we are glad they are at home preparing,” a Lauli’i resident told Samoa News at around 12:30 p.m. “The older folks are yelling at the kids, telling them to stay inside and everyone is just sitting around, waiting for another report, listening to the radio, watching TV and waiting for when the power goes off.”

Here is a picture of our neighbor's house. He works for a construction company, so his guys came out this morning to board up their windows. We haven't boarded up ours. We're just hoping the winds don't get out of hand.


The red crosshairs shows the center of the storm and our island is in the red circle. We thought Rene was going to pass further to the east, but the track keeps shifting further west of the earlier forecasts and it looks like we're going to get this passing directly over our islands tonight. So far we're doing ok, just waiting for when the power goes out.