Lana Smith flees as tsunami hits Samoa

Lana Smith, from Southampton, was holidaying on the Pacific paradise of Western Samoa when the alarm was raised. She jumped into a van with a local man after helping rescue his family and they drove to the safety of higher ground.

From there she sent a text message to her dad Jonathan, who had just arrived at St Mary’s to watch Saints play Bristol Rovers on Tuesday night.

It read: “There’s a tsunami about to hit Samoa, I’m OK, what should I do?”

Worried dad Jonathan replied telling Lana to make sure she made it to higher ground.

Later Lana discovered how lucky she had been when she found out she had slept through a previous tsunami warning.

More than 100 people across the islands of Western Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga died in the disaster after an earthquake in the southern Pacific Ocean. Lana had only arrived in Apia, Western Samoa, days before disaster struck.

Dad Jonathan, 66, an independent financial advisor, said: “As a parent, all the images of what you saw on Boxing Day five years ago, with 50ft walls of water coming down go through your head. It’s very worrying.”

Mum Mandy, 50, added: “I just felt completely helpless. You’re so far away and there’s nothing you can do. I was fraught with worry.

“She’s so lucky because of the way the tsunami hit the island, she was slightly protected from the first wave.

Fortunately she saw the pick-up truck and was able to escape the second.”

The Smith family were extra lucky as their son Louis, 22, who is training to be a doctor had been working on the island for six weeks, leaving just a month ago.

He had told Lana, who lives in Highfield, of the various beauty spots around the islands, but after the disaster all of those have been wiped out.

Lana, who has just finished a fiveyear course at Glamorgan University studying analytical forensic science, is travelling around Western Samoa alone.

She is now helping with the clear-up operation near the only hospital on the island of Apia and will be unable to leave until her scheduled flight departs in two weeks’ time.