Up to 100 dead after Samoan tsunami
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A tsunami that hit the South Pacific may have killed up to 100 people, with many more injured, Samoa's disaster management office has said.
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Assistant chief executive Ausegalia Mulipola said teams were still searching for victims of the tsunami, with reports some villages in the country's southeast had been destroyed.
A series of tsunamis smashed into the Pacific island nations of American Samoa and Samoa after a huge undersea quake off American Samoa. The death toll in American Samoa was officially 14, but could rise, said officials.
See tomorrow's edition of The Dominion Post for full coverage of the disaster.
Cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning water as survivors fled to high ground, where they remained huddled hours later. Signs of devastation were everywhere, with a giant boat getting washed ashore and coming to rest on the edge of a highway and floodwaters swallowing up cars and homes.
Hampered by power and communications outages, officials struggled to assess the casualties and damage. But the death toll seemed sure to rise, with dead bodies already piling up at a hospital in Samoa.
Samoa's deputy prime minister Misa Telefoni believes as many as 42 people may have died in this morning's earthquake and tsunami, and the south coast of Upolu has been devastated.
"We've had very heavy damage all along the coast and most of the tourist resorts have been wiped out."
He said a well-known Samoan business leader, Tuatagaloa Joe Annandale, is among those in a critical condition, while his wife Tui is believed to have been killed while they tried to save children in the village of Poutasi.
"I know these people well and these are not the sort of people who run away when children are in trouble."
Mr Telefoni told Stuff.co.nz that Samoa would be "most definitely" appealing for international aid as the country had suffered heavy infrastructure damage, both from the tsunami and the earthquake.
He said Samoa's main international airport was re-opened after having to be checked for earthquake damage.
Telefoni said he did not believe that authorities could have responded any better, given the quake was so close.
"The main damage is our relationship with the ocean, which we grew up seeing as our friend and a place where we can fish and swim. That's going to change forever," he said.
"The difficulty is that it now appears that the fault was very, very close to us and we only had minutes rather than hours to respond.
"... And what's becoming very, very clear is we've got to make sure for the future that our disaster response is really up to it, so we can evacuate people before they're actually in danger."
New Zealand Opposition leader Phil Goff has dispatched MP Chris Carter to Samoa.
The Samoan PM Tuilaeapa Sailele is in Auckland and is trying to make this afternoon's Air NZ special flight back to Samoa.
Russell Hunter, editor of the Samoan Observer, said it was difficult to get information. Internet and phone connections were patchy.
The latest he had heard was that at least 17 were confirmed dead.
"But it will undoubtedly go much higher than that. The damage is very, very widespread particularly on the south-east coast (of Upolu)," he said.
The south-east coast is an area with several holiday resorts as well as numerous villages.
A Samoan reporter said tsunami victims "are everywhere" in a hospital near a hard-hit area.
Associated Press reporter Keni Lesa said three or four villages on the popular tourist coast near the southern town of Lalomanu on Samoa's main island of Upolu had been "wiped out" by waves that roared ashore this morning.
Lesa said he had visited the town's main hospital where "there are bodies everywhere", including at least one child.
At least two Kiwis have been taken to hospital in Samoa following the tsunami.
They are believed to be an elderly woman and a pregnant woman who were staying a resort near Lalomanu.
It is believed they were suffering from shock and were not seriously injured.
Three South Koreans are among the dead in American Samoa, an official at Seoul's foreign ministry said.
A number of Australians were also injured.
TRAUMATISED
Lyall Preston and a group of holidaymakers from Dargaville in Northland watched from higher ground as the tsunami hit their Sinalei resort located on Samoa's southern coastline.
The group then witnessed the bodies of three young children wash towards them.
Speaking to Dargaville and Districts News, Collen Preston said her son found three little children dead.
"He is just traumatised".
"My son noticed early this morning that the tide had gone right out so he organised for the group to run to higher ground and they watched as the tsunami hit."
Ms Preston believes the group were not warned that a tsunami was coming.
"Most of the hotel they were staying at was washed away."
VILLAGE FLATTENED
An unspecified number of fatalities and injuries were reported in the Samoan village of Talamoa. New Zealander Graeme Ansell said the beach village of Sau Sau Beach Fale was leveled.
"It was very quick. The whole village has been wiped out," Ansell told New Zealand's National Radio from a hill near Samoa's capital, Apia. "There's not a building standing. We've all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need 'round here."
Wellingtonian John Elsmore, who was in Samoa for a surfing holiday, was up on a hill in Siumu when the quake struck.
"We looked out to sea and the water drawing off the reef, the reef got fully exposed.''
The 27-year-old then watched as the surge came ashore and ripped through resorts such as Coconuts Resort and Maninoa Surf Camp.
"Everything's completely destroyed... the place is devastated.''
He said bodies of those who had died lay under trees.
"Everyone's just trying to gather stuff up. A lot of the locals have just stayed up on the hills.''
CARS STUCK IN MUD AFTER TSUNAMI
A tsunami was observed at Apia, Samoa, and at Pago Pago, American Samoa, according to the West Coast/Alaska Tsunami Warning Centre, a branch of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The waves at Pago Pago were 1.57m above normal sea level, according to the Pacific Western Tsunami Warning Centre in Hawaii.
The centre earlier issued a tsunami warning for New Zealand, American Samoa and other small Pacific islands. It later cancelled the warning.
The tsunami in Pago Pago sent sea water surging inland about 100 metres before receding, leaving some cars stuck in mud.
The staff of the port ran to higher ground, and police soon came by, telling residents to get inland.
In Fagatogo, water reached the waterfront town's meeting field and covered portions of the main highway, which also was plagued by rock slides.
Sulili Dusi told New Zealand's National Radio that "everything dropped on the floor and we thought the house was going to go down as well. Thank God, it didn't". Along with neighbours, they fled to high ground.
She said the tsunami hit the south side of the island, and some "cars have been taken". She did not elaborate, but added "we just thank God no life has been taken yet".
Local media said they had reports of some landslides in the Solosolo region of the main Samoan island of Upolu and damage to plantations in the countryside outside Apia.
In the northern Tongan island of Vavau the earthquake has also been severely felt.
The New Zealand Government had held major concerns for the tiny low-lying Pacific states of Tokelau and Tuvalu, but a spokesman for Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully said reports from both countries confirmed they had not been hit by a tsunami.
It appeared they had escaped damage as they are to the north of Samoa and the earthquake was to the south of Samoa.
SURVIVOR: SAMOA
Filming of a new season of Survivor: Samoa - the second in a row to be filmed on Samoa's Upolu Island - was not affected by the tsunami.
A CBS spokesperson said: "Everyone's okay. Survivor crew are okay and filming was not affected."
Around 400 Survivor crew controversially took over Aggie Grey's Lagoon to film two back-to-back seasons of the hit reality show
- By Stuff.co.nz reporters with AP, AAP, Reuters, NZPA
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god bless samoa they have been such an inspiration to nz i knew somebody who died over there and it is devastating poor david tua and the people who lost their loved ones
god bless samoa
GOD BLESS SAMOA AND ALL THE SAMOAN ALL OVER THE WORLD AND ALSO OTHER PACIFIC ISLANDS.XOXOXOX
omg this is crazy,thinking of Joe who passed, you will 4eva b remebered
they just said on the tv that the waves that hit samoa were 6m high, and 40cm high here on the east cape
prayers to the people in sa...:(
Storms may produce bigger waves than 1m, but they don't have the horizontal depth and power of a 1m tsunami.
@ Simon #2. The article says:
The quake was magnitude 8.3, depth 35km, struck at 6:48am NZ time, 205 kilometres south of the Samoan capital of Apia, and 2685 kilometres north east of Auckland. If CNN says it was 3m high, then it may even have been 3m high. What else do you want to know?
I suggest that you read the article, it's quite interesting.
oh come on some details please, how deep was the quake, and yes americans are saying 3m, but reality 1m...
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sorry for the ones that died