Rachel McClintock Lynn and her husband, Jeff, were living and working at a resort in Samoa — she as assistant general manager, he as chef — when a magnitude-8.0 earthquake and tsunamis of up to 40 feet struck on Sept. 29, 2009, killing 194.

Here, she shares her thoughts written three days after that tragedy, recounting events and devastation after the quake and tsunamis hit.

INTRODUCTION

Upolu, Samoa » I am so tired. Today is Friday morning. Tuesday we had a tsunami. I am sitting in a Third World hospital for the third time in three days waiting to find out what is wrong.

We live and work at a resort on the south shore of Upolu, the main island in Samoa. My husband is the chef and I am the assistant general manager.

I had gone running. I had finished and was running home. About half a mile away from Coconuts, I noticed the ground ripple in front of me. A wave of earth moved before my eyes. When I looked up to the power lines I saw them swaying and immediately decided to move to the other side of the road. Then I heard the rustle of leaves shaking on trees, but there was no wind. I heard the children at the school screaming. We were having an earthquake.

From the ripple I saw pass before my eyes and the duration of the shaking, I knew it was pretty big. I started running for home. We would later learn an extremely rare phenomenon of two earthquakes hitting within seconds of each other had occurred. One earthquake was 7.9 and the other, seconds later, was 8.1.

Jeff soon came driving up the road in a car to check on me. I told him I was fine. We spoke for a few minutes and then he drove home and I ran back.

We met at the front door of our fale and I suggested that he go to the office and check for a tsunami warning online. About two weeks before, we had a 6.6 earthquake that alerted me to the fault line 125 miles offshore from the beach we lived at. After the previous earthquake I knew that we had only 10 to 20 minutes before the waves would come rushing onshore.

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Upolu, Samoa » Oddly enough I decided I needed to be clean. As I was stepping out of the shower, the tsunami warning sirens started wailing. My heart sank. Jeff ran to the front door and yelled, "We have to go, a tsunami is coming!" He said he was going down to the resort to warn the guests.

I grabbed a pair of pants and wrestled them onto my wet body. I grabbed a bra and a shirt. I was shaking so hard I couldn’t close the bra clasp. I slipped my feet into flip flops and ran out the door with a shirt in my hand. I was topless but I didn’t care. I could hear the roar of the approaching wave.

I ran as fast as I could up the hill. The kitchen staff was moving up as well. They were beginning to tire and slow down. I kept screaming at them to run. I knew we had to get as far and high as we could. I had recently read that a tsunami could go up to a mile inland and we still weren’t on very high ground yet. I ran for my life.

Everyone else around me ran, too. Sometimes you have dreams where you are running and not really moving. I had always wondered if given the situation where my life depended on my ability to move if fear would paralyze me. It didn’t, I was able to get away. I was full of fear and adrenaline. Running for my life …

About half a mile up the hill everyone started to converge around the Fale O’o, a village meeting place. I knew that Jeff was still down at the resort. So after the first wave hit I ran back down. I could only make it to the entrance because everything was destroyed.

I was screaming Jeff’s name, praying for a response. There was none. Some of the resort employees and villagers were down there with me. I waded out of the knee-deep water. I lost one of my shoes but there was no finding it in the murk. They pointed to the ocean and we all saw the next wave coming, a wall of black water.

I ran for my life again. I ran up the hill filled with fear and despair. Jeff was gone. I turned around and saw the water coming. I waited at the top of a smaller hill, not as far away.

As I saw the water recede I started to head back down and look for Jeff. By then people were beginning to emerge from the resort. I studied them, hunting for my husband. They were disheveled, bloody, nude and shell-shocked.

Bob, the maintenance manager, had already gone back down to help with guests. I was walking down with Lina, the general manager. I told her that I couldn’t find Jeff and I was afraid that he was gone. I told her that the resort was completely destroyed. She looked at me with disbelief. I went back to the entrance and started calling for Jeff again. My wailing met no response. I cried: Jeff! Jeff! Jeff! By that time I had taken my other shoe off. I was barefoot.

Then the tsunami siren started going off again. The third wave was coming in. I turned up the hill again and ran, ran for my life.

Joe, one of the hotel staff, came driving up and said to get in the car. I did but the others came up as well, so I climbed in the trunk of the SUV. The people getting in the car were guests who had physically experienced the first two waves. They were battered and bruised. They could barely walk. We started driving up the hill.

I was desperate to find Jeff but the resort was under water. I feared that he was swept out to sea.

As we were making our way up the hill, I saw a wet man with a familiar Kid Rock t-shirt on. I didn’t recognize his shorts but I was pretty sure that it was Jeff. As soon as we stopped the car, I got out and ran back down the hill. It was him! He had a bed sheet wrapped around his head and an unknown pair of swim trunks on — but he was alive.

He had a huge gash in his knee, he was coughing up water, he could barely walk. I asked him to stop and lay down but he was deathly afraid of the next wave. He wanted to get far away from the ocean. He was starting to go into shock. We got him to the top of the hill and laid him down. His wet shirt came off and we got him a dry long sleeve. He was shivering in 85 degree weather. He was shaking, getting pale, clammy, gasping for air and crying out in pain. He had cuts everywhere. I tied the bed sheet around his leg to stop the bleeding and applied pressure to the wound on his knee.

People started organizing the injured and we hired two taxis to take them to the hospital. Jeff and I were in the front taxi and the rest of the guests were in the taxi van in back. We raced up the hill with the horns blaring. People were lining the sides of the road all the way up the hill – children in school uniforms, mothers carrying their babies, tourists with glazed eyes. They were all walking away from the ocean. …

On the way to the hospital Jeff told me his story. He had been down by the beach screaming at guests to run. It was good that he did because later a guest would confide that Jeff had saved the lives of his partner and two kids. Being from Australia and New Zealand, the guests thought that the siren meant "fire" so they exited the buildings and waited. Had Jeff not yelled at them to run, they would have been washed away.

As Jeff saw the wave coming he started to run to the resort. The water got up to his waist so he started to climb a coconut tree. He got parallel with the top of the rock wall at the Spa, about 12 feet high. He held on desperately to the coconut tree as the wave washed over his head. He realized that if he continued to hold on he would drown. He made the decision to let go and take his chances floating in a tsunami. He immediately got pushed under water. It was black. There was debris everywhere. The current was immense.

He is still haunted by the decision he had to make. Do you hold on to the safety of the tree, not get washed out to sea and possibly drown — or do you take your chances and float in a tsunami?

At the hospital all of the guests were put in different rooms. We put two sheets over Jeff but he was still shaking pretty badly. I stayed with him while the doctor stitched up his knee. The nurse left me with a cup of iodine and a few cotton swabs so that I could clean off the rest of his cuts. The doctor just thought his ribs were bruised — no problem. They hooked him up to an IV. It was a poor connection and he dripped blood everywhere.

Once Jeff was situated I started to go around the hospital and locate the rest of the Coconuts guests. There were nine in total. They were all bruised, battered and shocked.

One gentleman, John, was still missing his wife. Maree had wanted to spend her 50th birthday at Coconuts for 10 years. She had saved and planned for the vacation. She and her husband left their 14-year-old daughter at home to make the trek to Samoa. They had come out of the room and started to run when they heard the siren. Then she fell. She said she broke her leg. He picked her up and started to carry her. As he carried her, the wave came. He can’t swim. He held on to her as long as he could, but she slipped away. That was the last time he saw her alive.

Other guests had serious lacerations. One man explained how his wife had a stick protruding from her cheek and he had to pull it out. That was the same father who had thanked Jeff for saving his family. … When they heard Jeff yelling they started to run into the woods. As the water came, he got his family up in a tree and he started to climb up as well. He saw a car come floating straight toward him. The car hit him and pinned him against a tree. He grabbed for his son as the water got higher. He held on tight and his family survived.

The feeling at the hospital was an overwhelming sense of gratitude to be alive. Everyone there was beaten and battered, but alive, except John. Part of him died. Later in the afternoon he was taken to the morgue to identify Maree’s body.

Jeff and I waited outside the hospital. We had nothing. As far as we knew, everything had been washed away or looted. We entered a new reality where physical possessions no longer mattered because, at least we had each other. …At this point we had nothing, nothing except our lives. No wallet, no money, no underwear. Nothing. We drove over the hill in silence.

When we got to the resort I went straight to our fale (house). It used to be parallel to the ocean, but it was now perpendicular. It had been lifted off the foundation and floated down with the wave. The front room was gone completely. There were still some clothes left but I could tell that the place had been looted. …

We carried out and secured our suitcases in a car. Later we found out that one of our co-workers had gone into our room and grabbed anything he thought was valuable.

Then we began to walk the property. The utter destruction was unbelievable and still is. The over-the-water fales were completely gone. Yesterday they were found in Mulavai, a mile down the beach. …

The beach fales were standing but windows and walls were blown out. Beds were standing against walls. We saw police officers looting the weight room. Everything was covered in sand. The beautiful blue lagoon was black. …

As we walked, a police officer said that another tsunami was coming and to get off the beach. We ran for our lives again. This time it was harder. Jeff was slower, we had to dodge debris, dead fish. We ran across barbed wire and wood, torn plant life and soiled machines. But we ran.

The next day we went back to Coconuts. I stopped by the hospital and visited with the injured guests; they were doing OK and were hoping to be medevaced soon. I spoke to my mom that morning, grateful to hear her voice. I told her we had been in touch with the U.S. Embassy. I said we would call when we can. Waiting was difficult.

The people who took us in that night buried their wonderful auntie, Tui Anandale. She was one of the owners of the neighboring resort, Sinalei. They tried to drive away but the wave caught their car and flipped it like a toy. She was thrown from the back seat and ended up in the top of a 50-foot coconut tree. Her husband had to cut down the tree to rescue his dead wife. …

Today the emotions are beginning to emerge. When Jeff and I drove over the hill to Coconuts, we each began to cry as we saw the ocean. It is so beautiful, that drive over the hill. In Samoa the ocean is such a rich, beautiful aqua color. It looks so inviting coming down the hill, but it is so deadly. If it wants you it will take you. I am only so grateful that it wanted us to live.

I cannot describe the overwhelming sense of gratitude I feel. People are stepping up to help those in need. I am grateful to Phillip, whom we barely knew, who brought me shoes and Jeff clothes at the hospital and then gave us a ride back to our destroyed home. I am grateful to the owner of The Spa who saw us, was concerned about how we looked, and encouraged us to come see them for some TLC — physically and mentally. I am grateful for the Australian "team" — from the people who work at the High Commission who offered us support and encouragement at the hospital that day, to all of the doctors, nurses and EMTs who are seeing both the physical and mental effects of this disaster. …

I have yet to meet a single aid worker or journalist from my own country.

I am grateful to Rob Wetzell and Katie Reardon. The night of the disaster they took four of us Coconuts staff members home with them. They have set up a posh refugee camp that serves wine, cheese, beer and fabulous dinners. They have nine cats and a dog to offer comfort, companionship and laughter. …

As I write this I am grateful to reach over and touch the warm body of my husband. We sit in a hospital room in Samoa for the third time in a week. I am grateful for the opportunity to sit with him. He has a black eye, scrapes all over his body, two broken ribs, a puncture wound in his knee, a broken toe and an empty spot where pliers just removed his toenail. But he is here.

We moved to Samoa to be together every day. We were hoping to simplify our lives. I am grateful for the opportunity to joke with him about how the tsunami simplified it real quick. I am grateful for the opportunity to tell him I love him a hundred times a day, and I am utterly grateful to have him here to respond that he loves me back.