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Gov. Tulafono: It gives me great pleasure at this time to introduce our special guest in
American Samoa today and perhaps for the rest of the weekend and next week. We have
here Ms. Nancy Ward, Region IX FEMA regional administrator. Having been gone for a
couple of weeks it's really amazing return, returning to the island and see the
tremendous progress that has taken place. I want to thank Mr. Tingman and the federal
team and I want to thank the GAR.
Nancy Ward: Thank you Governor and it's an honor to be seated with you here today, along
with Ms. Langford and FEMA's FCO Ken Tingman to discuss the amazing work in
progress that has been made over the month and a half by the federal-territory partnership.
Many of my FEMA folks and my federal partners have said to me over these last many
weeks that their time here has truly been an honor to be able to help the American
Samoan people and to see the resolve that the American Samoan people have in trying to
recover from such a devastating event. The new tents are here. I was in Amanave this
morning and I believe that as we speak they're being delivered there and work has
begun to start to construct those new tents. I think that once you see them you'll be as
pleased as we are that these tents go a long way in providing some intermediate sheltering
on people's property prior to us being able to start to do more permanent housing
construction. And finally I've been extremely impressed that after 46 days since this event,
the amount of debris that has been cleared and not only cleared out of the right of ways to
allow ingress and egress of transportation but that is gone. The community debris removal
program that was established just recently has just been a phenomenal effort and I have to
say that in all my years of emergency management, the U.S. mainland, Governor,
can take a great deal of learning from your leadership in removing the debris.