Tsunami hits Samoa after huge earthquake

PAGO PAGO, American Samoa (AP) — A powerful Pacific Ocean earthquake spawned towering tsunami waves that swept ashore on Samoa and American Samoa early Tuesday, flattening villages, killing at least 39 people and leaving dozens of workers missing at devastated National Park Service facilities.

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. Hampered by power and communications outages, officials struggled to assess the casualties and damage.

American Samoa Gov. Togiola Tulafono said at least 50 were injured, in addition to the deaths.

Hampered by power and communications outages, officials struggled to assess the casualties and damage. But the death toll seemed sure to rise, with bodies already piling up at a hospital in Samoa.

The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, struck around dawn about 20 miles below the ocean floor, 120 miles from American Samoa, a U.S. territory that is home to 65,000 people, and 125 miles from Samoa.

The territory is home to a U.S. National Park that appeared to be especially hard-hit. Holly Bundock, spokeswoman for the National Park Service’s Pacific West Region in Oakland, Calif., said the superintendent of the park and other staffers had been able to locate only 20 percent of the park’s 13 to 15 employees and 30 to 50 volunteers.

Mike Reynolds, superintendent of the National Park of American Samoa, was quoted as saying four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet high roared ashore soon afterward, reaching up to a mile inland. Bundock said Reynolds spoke to officials from under a coconut tree uphill from Pago Pago Harbor and reported that the park’s visitor center and offices appeared to have been destroyed.

Residents in both Samoa and American Samoa reported being shaken awake by the quake. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a general alert from American Samoa to New Zealand; Tonga suffered some coastal damage from 13-foot waves.

Japan’s Meteorological Agency also issued a tsunami warning all along that country’s eastern coast.

Mase Akapo, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in American Samoa, said at least 19 people were killed in four separate villages on the main island of Tutuila, and 20 people died in neighboring Samoa. The initial quake was followed by at least three aftershocks of at least 5.6 magnitude.

An Associated Press reporter saw the bodies of about 20 victims in a hospital in the town of Lalomanu on the south coast of the main island, Upolu, and said the surrounding tourist coast had been flattened, with the dead, including those who hesitated to leave right after the quake.

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.”