South Pacific islands face after shocks

APIA – The ABC is reporting that dozens of aftershocks are rocking islands in the South Pacific after yesterday’s undersea quake churned up tsunamis that left an estimated 140 people dead in Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga.

Villages were wiped out and tourist resorts flattened, with the death toll expected to rise.

Samoa’s prime minister, Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, said that he was shocked at the devastation. “So much has gone. So many people are gone,” he said. “I’m so shocked, so saddened by all the loss.”

Returning New Zealand holidaymakers told of "truckloads" of bodies in the worst hit area on the southern side of Upuolo.

Three of the key resorts on the Samoa’s south east coast are scenes of "total devastation" while a fourth "has a few units standing on higher ground," Nynette Sass of Samoa’s National Disaster Management committee told New Zealand’s National Radio.

The full extent of the disaster is still unraveling but authorities in Tonga, southwest of the Samoas, confirmed at least six dead and four missing.

Among the reported victims are four Australians and one New Zealander. More than 300 New Zealanders have been declared safe.

Australian resident Lynne Coles said two of her cousins were killed in a car crash, caused by the initial earthquake. "They were driving on the road and as the earthquake erupted the road was cut in half … the people were seen being thrown off the car as the earthquake erupted," she said.

One of the resorts in Samoa that was destroyed was the Ili Ili.

“We had just finished sweeping and we looked out to sea and there was nothing — no water, there was only coral,” one worker at the resort on the Samoan island of Upolo told The Times.

“Then, after about five minutes, we saw the big wave coming and I said, ‘We have to flee’. So we left in the car and we could see the wave — which was about three metres high — coming closer. We were driving down the main road and we could see the wave.

“We don’t have a resort anymore. Everything has gone. The boat, the bungalows, the restaurant — gone.”

Several other resort properties were devastated by the wall of water triggered by the undersea earthquake.

Samoan officials say it could take a week before the full extent of the damage is known.

The Samoa islands comprise two separate entities – the nation of Samoa and American Samoa, a US territory. The total population is about 250,000.

The BBC reported that cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning waters and boats were dumped on highways as survivors fled to high ground, where they remained huddled hours later.

A group of New Zealand high school students spent a day and night stranded on a tiny island off Samoa, after watching the tsunami sweep away their belongings.

Graeme Ansell, a New Zealander in Samoa, told a New Zealand radio station that the beach village of Sau Sau Beach Fale had been flattened by the waves. “It was very quick. The whole village has been wiped out,” he said.

“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.”

Wendy Booth, who owns the Sea Breeze resort on Upolo, said that she and her husband clung to a handrail to stop being sucked out to sea.

“The second wave hit and came up through the floor, pushed out the back door and threw us outside,” she told a local radio station.

“We managed to hang on to a handrail. My husband and I just hung on to each other and the handrail and then that one went but the suck-out was tremendous.

“The force of the wave took furniture through the roof.”

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