KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM Hawaii residents Marumina Soyon, left, and mom Yumeko Soyon were mourning family members yesterday lost in a typhoon-related landslide in Chuuk atoll, Micronesia. They also have relatives who were hurt and are still hospitalized.

Isle woman’s home
decimated by typhoon

She lost 7 cousins when a storm
caused devastating landslides

---

By Mary Vorsino
mvorsino@starbulletin.com

Marumina Soyon remembers her childhood home as it was when she left it -- nestled in a valley in the small village of Nechap, on Tonoas island in Chuuk atoll, surrounded by green mountains and only minutes from the sea.

Soyon, a resident of Moanalua Valley, cannot imagine what the village must have looked like late Monday, when the mountain walls melted, swallowing the home, killing seven of her cousins and injuring 14 other family members.

Soyon talked by phone with her older sister Monday night after Typhoon Chataan had hit.

"It was noontime. My older sister told my younger sister to get some platters because they were going to have lunch. (That's) when they saw the landscaping come down with water.

"(They) were trying to run and were covered up under it. It took (my brother) all the way to the seashore," half a mile away.

Her brother and sisters survived, suffering bruises and broken bones. Eleven other family members -- three nieces, two aunts and an uncle among them -- were also hurt. Of the 14, seven were hospitalized.

Seven of her cousins, including two young children and two women in their 20s, were buried under the mud.

Three of them had not been found as of yesterday.

Nechap was one of more than 39 villages ravaged by landslides caused by heavy rains and strong winds from Typhoon Chataan, which swept through much of Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia earlier this week and ravaged Guam yesterday.

According to news reports, as of last night at least 39 people were killed and more are feared dead under landslides throughout the island chain.

Soyon, a family advocate for the Oahu Head Start program, last visited her childhood home in 2000.

"I would love to go back and see what really happened.

"I can't imagine how horrible they (her family) felt ... trapped under the ground. I don't know how to describe (it). I feel empty."

One of her brothers, Mack Soyon, who lives in Halawa, talked to a cousin in Chuuk not long after the incident.

"He told me that it looked like an earthquake or something," Soyon said. "He told me that back home (where) we have a house and when the things happened, the ground was falling down and (swept) the house" away.

"They lost everything. They didn't know what was happening. ... They tried to hold on."

Two of Soyon's other brothers, John and Joyce, and their mother came to Hawaii in March after Joyce fell ill and needed medical attention.

If the three had not been here, they would have been in the home during the slide, and Marumina Soyon knows her mother would have perished.

"(She told me), 'It's terrible. Oh, what if I was there? I'm probably the one who didn't make it.'"

Marumina, John, Joyce, their four sisters, three brothers and mother plan to rebuild their childhood home.

For now, much of Marumina Soyon's family in Nechap is homeless -- but then, so is the entire village. All of the homes in the valley were destroyed. The Soyons' closest neighbor was injured, and his two children and wife were killed, Mack Soyon said. For now, Soyon's relatives are staying in hotels or at the hospital, with injured loved ones.