The Samoa Red Cross Society conducted their routine visits to Disaster Relief Depot sites around Samoa ensuring that these emergency facilities are in good condition.

This will be a week-long project where they have already visited sites in Apolima and Manono on Monday and will be visiting a few more sites in Upolu before paying a visit to Savaii on Thursday.

The Samoa Red Cross Society has received a massive boost to their disaster relief work with a grant agreement signed with the British High Commission.

The agreement will allow for $33,000 of monetary support which will go towards the construction of new Red Cross emergency disaster relief storage depots in a few villages within the Upolu Island.

The Red Cross project includes the construction of a new standard house in the village of Siuniu within the Faleata District which will cater to the Falealili West and East side of Upolu Island.

The location had been approved by the Samoa Red Cross Society as the most efficient location for effective coordination of their humanitarian response work.

The Samoa Red Cross Secretary General Namulauulu Tautala Mauala said depot sites will help the villages especially when help is still on its way.

"It takes time for us to reach these villages that are far from the town and help is not always on time so the idea is that our relief supplies are pre-positioned so that people can be helped immediately after the disaster," she said.

"This leads us to build depots around the country and this project has been in the making since 2005 after Cyclone Heta struck in 2004. We were able to work with a few of the villages in building these depots."

Stationed at these locations are emergency supplies for disaster relief and other facilities to cater for emergencies.

The facility will in part also play as a central point for coordinating Red Cross health and disaster management programs and activities such as first aid trainings, blood donor recruitment, HIV/STI testing, water and sanitations, disaster risk reduction, climate change adaption (CCA), and many others in preparation for times of disaster and emergency.

There are a total of seven depot sites right now and they are continuing to develop more for a rapid emergency response to disaster relief.