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Hearing screams from tsunami victims tortures The Rock's uncle, "Wild Samoan" Afa Anoa'i

Posted: Oct 3rd 2009 By: mikeiles

MINNEOLA - Former professional wrestler Afa Anoa'i could hear people running and screaming in the background as he listened in horror to his brother on the other end of the phone, half a world away, describe the devastation after a powerful earthquake and tsunami wiped out his native village in American Samoa.

While on the phone, Anoa'i sat in his Minneola living room watching the first pictures of the destruction on television.

"It was a bad scene," Anoa'i said Friday. "It's something that I'll always remember. It was chaos."

Then later Anoa'i received even more bad news: Two of his cousins were killed in the disaster. One was Ann Tui Annandale, a resort owner who was swept away by waves Tuesday while trying to rescue children in the village of Poutasi. The other was Michelle Salave'a, high-school principal in the village of Leone.

Family ties
Anoa'i, a member of the famous wrestling duo "The Wild Samoans" who now runs The Wild Samoan Training Center in Minneola, was born and grew up in Fagatogo, near the capital of Pago Pago, one of the hardest-hit areas of the powerful tsunami.

Many from his large family, including his older brother, Tumua, still live on American Samoa, which sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean almost 7,000 miles from Minneola. Anoa'i's nephew is actor and wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson.

When the huge suboceanic quake measuring 8.0 in magnitude struck, it created giant waves ? some as high as 30 feet, according to witnesses ? that flattened buildings and swept cars, boats and people out to sea in a river of mud.

The death toll has risen to more than 30 in American Samoa with more deaths in Samoa and Tonga, according to The Associated Press on Friday. Some bodies were still being pulled from the Pacific.

Many of the island's thousands of people fled to higher ground before the tsunami.

"Most of my family, they were lucky enough, by the grace of God, to get up to the mountains," Anoa'i said.

Fundraiser planned
Anoa'i, who came to the United States mainland in the early 1960s, said he was at Minneola City Hall on Tuesday helping to set up his family's booth for the community's farmers market when he received a call from a relative in San Francisco telling him about the quake.

Anoa'i rushed home, turned on the television and tried to call everyone in his family.

Coincidentally, Anoa'i was planning to return to his hometown in a few days to take part in a family ceremony. But the trip had been postponed before the tsunami.

On Friday, Anoa'i met with Minneola Mayor David Yeager to organize a Nov. 8 fundraiser to help tsunami victims.

Scores of residents in American Samoa will be without power and clean water for weeks, according to relief workers.

"I'm asking the community and all the Polynesian people of this area to help any way they can," he said.

On Friday, Anoa'i sat near a radio and television listening to reports. He said it's hard for him to communicate with family members on the island because many of them are trying to conserve their cell-phone batteries.

"He's pretty torn up about it," Yeager said. "The Samoan people are very, very close. They are very tight."

Now retired, Anoa'i, 66, and his brother, Sika, were part of a tag-team wrestling duo ? famous for their wild-men image ? in the World Wrestling Federation and World Wide Wrestling Federation.

In the 1990s, Afa Anoa'i opened the Wild Samoans Training Center in Pennsylvania, which trained several famous wrestlers, including Junkyard Dog, Bam Bam Bigelow and Batista.

In 2007, the Wild Samoans were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. Last year, Afa Anoa'i moved to Minneola from Pennsylvania and opened his new school off U.S. Highway 27. The facility's one-year anniversary was marked with an event a week ago attended by The Rock.