Makeshift crosses dot the shattered landscape of the Samoan tsunami’s “Ground Zero,” a village of tropical homes and beachside resorts which has been literally wiped off the map.
Upturned cars, toppled concrete pillars and mounds of debris mark the site of Lalomanu, home to hundreds of people just 24 hours earlier. Now, not even a single building remains.
Tony Hill, head of the joint-agency aid operation, said the village was “just Ground Zero” of the disaster that has left at least 148 people dead in the Samoan islands and Tonga.
“For Samoa this is just real devastation, I have never seen anything like this before,” Hill said. “I have been overseas where there have been major incidents, but this is a major for me.”
As Hill spoke, rescuers pulled a tourist’s backpack containing family photographs from wreckage where bodies were found earlier. Red Cross volunteer coordinator Lapa Tofilau said the village had yielded dozens of corpses.
“We’re still pulling out bodies now, but we have already taken out 30 to 40 people today alone,” Tofilau said. “We cannot account for the bodies that families have taken themselves to the hospital or just buried. We are trying everything we can to find missing bodies.”
Police and Australian army rescuers combed the hillside for victims and formed a grid to search every part of the wrecked village, as New Zealand’s air force patrolled the seas looking for corpses washed away by the waves.
Lalomanu’s pristine white sands, normally scattered with sun-loungers and basking tourists, were strewn with personal effects and furniture, with a red velvet armchair lying beside a felled power pole.
Dozens of police fanned out in formation along the beach, using sticks to probe the detritus for bodies buried beneath. Light rain fell from ominous, overcast skies.
Similar scenes were visible elsewhere in the Samoan archipelago, swamped by deadly tsunamis on Tuesday.
In nearby Poutasi, villagers made the heartbreaking discovery of the bodies of a woman and her baby granddaughter dumped in a bush by the giant waves.
Clean-up work, involving cranes and gangs of workmen, paused as a solemn religious procession passed to honor the two victims.
One villager told how her aunt was swept against a beached fishing trawler, fracturing her skull, as she tried to outrun the sudden waves.
“No, no, no time. No bells, no siren. In one minute, right when they saw the wave, it was here,” resident Lonnie Mai said.
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