Rescuers pulled bodies from the mud and twisted rubble and fished bloated corpses from the South Pacific off Samoa on Wednesday as the death toll from a series of tsunamis climbed further.
A spotter aircraft circled the ocean looking for bodies, dropping smoke flares to pinpoint their location for a boat to collect. Within an hour, five were hauled ashore and the aircraft proceeded with its gruesome search.
The death toll stood at around 140, but officials said it was rising, with hundreds missing. Some 20 Polynesian villages were destroyed in Samoa and scores flattened in nearby American Samoa.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“We’ve seen pick-up trucks carrying the dead ... back to town,” New Zealand tourist Fotu Becerra said. “We were shocked when we saw the first one, but after three hours it seemed normal.”
Four powerful tsunamis generated by a huge undersea quake crashed into Samoa and American Samoa on Tuesday, destroying in minutes a paradise of palm trees, resorts and pristine beaches.
“After the earthquake happened, after about five minutes all you could hear was screaming,” an unidentified Australian holidaymaker said.
The waves, at least 6m high, ripped buildings apart and washed people out to sea, some still sleeping in their beds, survivors said. One mother watched in horror as her three children playing in the sand were swept away. Many died after being crushed by debris swirling in the floodwaters.
Two refrigerated shipping containers, on grass behind the main hospital in the Samoan capital Apia, served as makeshift morgues after the hospital morgue could accept no more corpses.
Along the southern coast of Samoa’s main island Upolu, which bore the brunt of the tsunamis, palm trees had nearly all been flattened, snapped like twigs by the force of the ocean.
A layer of mud and sand covered many shattered buildings, and boats and cars hung from trees, as survivors scavenged the debris. Survivors said people were collecting dead fish, washed ashore by the waves, to feed their families.
US President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in American Samoa and ordered federal aid to help the recovery.
“We have more bodies that are being found in the wreckage and being excavated, and being brought to the hospital, so we expect that the death toll will rise,” said David Bouslough at the main hospital in Pago Pago, capital of American Samoa.
Pago Pago resident Joey Cummings said buildings were not just destroyed, but had vanished, washed away by the waves.
“The harbor area, where the radio station was, looks like a bomb went off,” Cummings told US television. “If your building was not made of concrete, it doesn’t exist any more.”
Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said it was fortunate that the tsunami struck in daylight.
“If it had come in the dark and the tide was high, the number of people who died would be much higher,” he said.
“The devastation caused was complete,” Malielegaoi told New Zealand’s National Radio on Wednesday after inspecting the southeast coast of the main island of Upolu. “In some villages absolutely no house was standing. All that was achieved within 10 minutes by the very powerful tsunami.”
His own village of Lesa was washed away, as were many others in Samoa and nearby American Samoa and Tonga.
New Zealand school teacher Charlie Pearse choked back tears as she spoke to New Zealand’s TV One News from an Apia hospital bed in Samoa, recalling how she was trapped underwater and thought she was going to die.
She was in the back of a truck trying to outrun the tsunami with about 20 children when a wave tossed the truck and it landed on top of them.
“We all went under the water and I think a number of the children died instantly,” Pearse said. “I asked: ‘Is this my time to come home? Take me home, I’m ready,’ and I let my breath out and I took a big gulp of water ... and I don’t know, I just popped out [from under the water].”
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