--S1--

Tsunami deaths likely to rise in Pacific islands

SYDNEY, Oct 1 (Reuters) - Relief workers in American Samoa and Samoa on Thursday searched for survivors after a series of tsunamis smashed into the tiny Pacific islands, killing possibly more than 100 people and flattening villages.

Television images showed homes ripped apart, cars submerged in the sea or lodged in trees and large fishing boats hurled ashore by the waves generated by a 8.0 magnitude quake southwest of American Samoa, a U.S. territory.

Some victims were washed out to sea by waves that reached at least 6 metres (20 feet) high.

A second 7.9 magnitude earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra late Wednesday, prompting the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center to issue a tsunami watch for Indonesia, India, Thailand and Malaysia.

U.S. President Barack Obama declared a major disaster in American Samoa and ordered federal aid to help recovery efforts. Two U.S. C-130 transport planes were due to arrive there on Thursday, the beginning of an air bridge that will bring in relief workers and supplies.

"This will not be a short-term response," said Craig Fugate, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which coordinates the federal government's response to disasters.

"We know we're going to have to work to get resources in there, both in the immediate, which is the airlift, but also looking at shipping to bring in resources that are going to be needed in the next couple of weeks," he told reporters.

Fugate said the airport in American Samoa had been reopened but he stopped short of estimating casualties, saying the agency would wait for reports from Togiola Tulafono, the governor of the U.S. territory.

Speaking from Hawaii, Tulafono said at least 24 people were killed and 50 injured in American Samoa, with the southern portion of the main Tutuila island "devastated."

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said at least 60 people had been killed in Samoa.

The Australian government said two Australians, a 6-year-old girl and a woman aged 50, were killed and six others were missing. "It does look like there will be substantial loss of life in Samoa," said Australian Aid Minister Bob McMullan.

In Washington, Obama offered his condolences and said the United States was sending help to American Samoa.

"We also stand ready to help our friends in neighboring Samoa and throughout the region and we will continue to monitor this situation closely as we keep the many people who have been touched by this tragedy in our thoughts and our prayers.

HUGE WAVES, BUILDINGS DEMOLISHED

Shortly after local radio tsunami warnings were issued in the islands, waves started crashing into the capital of American Samoa, Pago Pago, and villages and resorts on the southern coasts, witnesses said.

Joey Cummings, a radio broadcaster in American Samoa, interviewed by ABC's "Good Morning America" program, said the tsunami produced a destructive, muddy river that swept away trees, boulders, cars and boats.

"If you have a building and it wasn't made out of concrete, bricks, it doesn't exist any more," he said. "You just have a series of concrete slabs with debris strewn all over the place. It looks like a bomb went off."

Ausegalia Mulipola, assistant chief executive of Samoa's disaster management office, told Reuters that there were reports of bodies covered in the large amounts of sand brought onshore by the waves.

Disaster officials said the death toll in Samoa may reach 100 as rescuers search for bodies on the southern shore of Upolu island. Twenty villages on the island, including Lepa, the home of Samoa's prime minister, were reportedly destroyed.

"Thankfully the alarm sounded on the radio and gave people time to climb to higher ground. But not everyone escaped," said Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi, adding that two children en route to hospital were swept away.

"Their car was just taken away. I'm so shocked, so saddened by all the loss," he told reporters on a flight from Auckland, New Zealand to Apia, the capital of Samoa.

The waves also destroyed tourist resorts in the area.

Wendy Booth, owner of the Samoan resort Sea Breeze on Upolu, said she and her husband were almost washed away when the waves destroyed their resort and carried its restaurant out to sea.

"The second wave hit and came up through the floor, pushed out the back door and threw us outside," she told Fairfax Radio Network in Australia, adding that the couples hanged onto each other and a handrail as parts of their resort disintegrated.

New Zealand said there were also serious concerns about the neighboring island nation of Tonga after a 4-metre (13-foot) wave hit its northern coast. Tongan officiasl after the quake and that many residents would not have had much time to run for higher ground.

 confirmed seven people were killed, while three were missing late Wednesday.

The two Samoas and Tonga have a combined population of about 400,000 people and rely on a combination of subsistence agriculture, fishing and tourism.

Small tsunamis also reached New Zealand, Hawaii and Japan.

An Indian Ocean tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, which killed about 230,000 people in 11 countries, is the worst on record.

Red Cross teams had mobilized more than 100 emergency workers who were collecting coconuts to help meet early food and water needs in the affected Pacific islands, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said.

(Additional reporting by Adrian Bathgate and Mantik Kusjanto in Wellington, Rob Taylor and James Grubel in Canberra, Stacey Joyce, David Alexander and Debbie Charles in Washington, Bud Seba in Houston, Jim Christie in San Francisco, Peter Henderson in Los Angeles; Editing by Paul Simao)

--S2--

American Samoans pulling together after quake, tsunami

By Jim Kavanagh
CNN

(CNN) -- Residents of close-knit American Samoaa  he said. re pulling together to help Pago Pago recover from Tuesday's devastating earthquake and tsunami, one of them told CNN on Wednesday.

 "That's how we operate over here in American Samoa -- basically everyone is related," said iReporter Maneafaiga T. Lagafuaina, 29, of the town of Lu'uuli. "And I know, at this time, especially with what American Samoa has experienced, we have pulled together as one.

"Families and friends from both ends of the island have found ways to volunteer and to help out with the village of Pago, with the disaster that they're going through right now," said Lagafuaina, who runs the computer system for the Pacific territory's legislature.

At least 111 people were confirmed dead -- 22 in American Samoa, 82 in Samoa and seven in Tonga, according to officials on the islands.

A U.S. Coast Guard C-130 cargo plane from Hawaii was scheduled to land with relief supplies around sunrise Wednesday in American Samoa, said Craig Fugate, administrator for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. A second C-130 was scheduled to land about five hours later. Video

The earthquake shook Lagafuaina out of bed shortly before 8 a.m. Tuesday, he said. Samoans know that earthquakes can cause tsunamis, and many people immediately rushed toward the inland mountains, he said. A tsunami did strike about 20 minutes later.

Pago Pago, the territorial capital at the apex of a U-shaped harbor, took the brunt of the tsunami. The town houses about 11,000 of the territory's 66,000 people.

"Houses were completely demolished, they were all shattered into pieces of timbers, they were all floating in the waters, and (survivors) were still looking for some missing relatives. I've never seen something like this before in my whole life," resident Maulolo Tavita said.

 Lagafuaina's area had a few falling rocks and trees from the quake but is too high up to be affected by the tsunami, he said.

Power was out in much of the island's eastern district, telephone service was spotty and many businesses, schools and government offices are closed until further notice, Lagafuaina said.

 Recovery operations are continuing 24 hours a day. Businesses are contributing heavy equipment such as bulldozers and backhoes to the effort, he said.

"Our first line of defense, meaning the police, our hospital, EMS, our homeland security, they have done a tremendous job," Lagafuaina said. "This is one of the first events that has happened that has shocked the whole entire island."

 Pago Pago has just one road in and one road out, so access is difficult.

"The roads are blocked and the island is cut in half," survivor Tausatolo Taugi said.

American Samoa has seen natural disasters before.

"Our hurricane season is pretty bad, but not as bad as this was," Lagafuaina said.

"The life we live nowadays is never safe," he said. "I mean, you can go live in Texas and we can substitute a hurricane with a tornado. But to have a tsunami -- the effect that we have with a tsunami is that anywhere else could have an earthquake; we just had an earthquake and a tsunami. We got the best of two worlds."
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Now all that's left is to clean up and cope, resident Steve Percival said:

"The aftermath has already passed by," he said, "so now we are just having to deal with the tragedy and the loss of life." 

--S3--

Tsunami death toll on Samoan islands rises to 99
By David Pierson

September 30, 2009 | 10:26 a.m

Reporting from Beijing -  The death toll in Samoa and American Samoa rose to 99 early today, according to news reports, after a powerful tsunami triggered by a deep ocean earthquake devastated coastal towns. Dozens of people were still missing.

Seventeen hours after the magnitude 8.0 temblor struck, another massive ocean earthquake off the coast of Indonesia's Sumatra island early today killed at least 75 people and trapping thousands under rubble. A tsunami warning was issued in the region but was later lifted.

The earlier quake was centered about 120 miles south of the islands of Samoa and American Samoa. It sent four waves, each 15 to 20 feet high, crashing up to a mile inland, according to the Associated Press.

Photographs posted online show collapsed buildings, overturned vehicles and debris strewn acros
The deeper the epicenter under the seabed, the less potential there is for a tsunami. In Sumatra, the depth of the epicenter was 49.7 miles, according to the United State
The Samoan quake struck below the ocean about 120 miles southwest of American Samoa and 125 miles south of Samoa, according to the geological survey.

Filipo Ilaoa, deputy director of the American Samoa office in Honolulu, said that the tsunami struck the territorys Geological Survey. In Samoa, it was just 11.2 miles below the seabed. For coastal areas close to the epicenter of a strong undersea earthquake, there is also little time for a formal tsunami warning to be sounded, Ms. Dutton said.

That appeared to be the case in the Samoas, where successive waves of earthquakes produced more damage throughout the day on Tuesday. The United States was concentrating its rescue efforts on American Samoa, sending two cargo planes from Honolulu to the area on Wednesday, said Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. 
The deeper the epicenter under the seabed, the less potential there is for a tsunami. In Sumatra, the depth of the epicenter was 49.7 miles, according to the United States Geological Survey. In Samoa, it was just 11.2 miles below the seabed. For coastal areas close to the epicenst after the quake and that many residents would not have had much time to run for higher ground.

 coastal communities. Electricity was said to be out in most parts of the islands because of a downed power plant that may not return online for a month, according to samoanews.com.

President Obama declared a major disaster for American Samoa, an American territory of 65,000 inhabitants, and said the Federal Emergency Management Agency is working with emergency responders in the region.

FEMA said it was sending teams and supplies from Hawaii.

Six people were confirmed dead in Tonga, south of the Samoas, according to Associated Press, which cited New Zealand's acting prime minister, Bill English. He said Tongan officials told him that four people were missing after the tsunami struck the northern island of Niua.

In Indonesia, the death toll was expected to rise after the massive earthquake toppled schools, hotels and shops in Padang, a city of 900,000 people, Reuters reported.

The shaker was felt hundreds of miles away in Singapore and the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

"Hundreds of houses have been damaged along the road. There are some fires, bridges are cut and there is extreme panic here," said a Reuters witness in the city, who also said broken water pipes had triggered flooding.

Padang is on one of the world's most active fault lines, where the Indo-Australia tectonic plate grinds against the Eurasia plate to create regular tremors and sometimes quakes. A 9.1-magnitude quake centered 373 miles northwest of Padang triggered the 2004 tsunami which killed 232,000 people in Indonesia, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India, and other countries across the Indian Ocean.

--S4--

Over 300 Die in Sumatra and Samoas Quakes 

By LIZ ROBBINS
Published: September 30, 2009

Devastation from two earthquakes thousands of miles apart spread throughout Southeast Asia and the South Pacific onW  Mr. Fugate told reporters in a conference call. ednesday, leaving death, injuries and panic in their wake from Indonesia's western coast to the far-flung islands of Samoa and American Samoa.

On the island of Sumatra, in Indonesia, a 7.6-magnitude quake struck Wednesday evening just 30 miles off the coast of the city of Padang, killing at least 200 people and trapping thousands in buildings. Indonesian television stations showed images of flattened hospitals, hotels and houses, burning cars and terrified residents running in the center of the city. Power and telecommunications were cut, complicating rescue efforts when night fell.

A second earthquake struck western Indonesia on Thursday morning more than 100 miles from the epicenter of the quake on Wednesday, The Associated Press reported. There were no immediate reports of damage.

Early on Tuesday in the Samoas, an underwater 8.0 magnitude quake produced a tsunami that struck with little warning after dawn, causing at least 103 deaths and 145 injuries, destroying villages throughout the islands . said Lilo Malava, the police commissioner of Samoa, in a telephone interview.

The Red Cross of Samoa said that 79 bodies had been recovered by Wednesday morning, and that 30 villages were hit hardest by the tsunami.

The epicenters of the quakes were located about 6,000 miles apart in an unsettled region, and immediately brought back vivid memories of the horrific tsunami that ravaged South Asia and Southeast Asia nearly five years ago, killing hundreds of thousands of people.

 The undersea earthquake that caused the Samoan tsunami and the latest strong quake in Indonesia, while from similar causes, were not directly connected, according to Julie Dutton, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center in Golden, Colo.

Both occurred in spots where one plate of the earth crust is subducting, or sliding beneath another plate. In spots, the two plates can become stuck until accumulating pressure leads to a sudden heaving release of energy. Under the sea, if the quake is around a magnitude of 8.0 or stronger and the seabed shifts in a way that moves a lot of water, the result is the high-energy waves of a tsunami.

The deeper the epicenter under the seabed, the less potential there is for a tsunami. In Sumatra, the depth of the epicenter was 49.7 miles, according to the United States Geological Survey. In Samoa, it was just 11.2 miles below the seabed. For coastal areas close to the epicenter of a strong underseaearthquake, there is also little time for a formal tsunami warning to be sounded, Ms. Dutton said. 

That appeared to be the case in the Samoas, where successive waves of earthquakes produced more damage throughout the day on Tuesday. The United States was concentrating its rescue efforts on American Samoa, sending two cargo planes from Honolulu to the area onW  Mr. Fugate told reporters in a conference call.e 

Mr. Fugate said that it was clear the tsunami had caused a dnesday, said Craig Fugate, administrator of the Federal Emergency Mna but that it was too early for his office to provide or confirm estimates of deaths, injuries or property damage.

On Tuesday, officials said that at least 24 people had been killed, and the territory
governor, Togiola T. A. Tulafono, said in a news conference that the worst damage had been caused by the second and third waves in a series of four. Widespread devastation was also reported in the territroy's capital, Pago Pago.

The Samoan quake struck below the ocean about 120 miles southwest of American Samoa and 125 miles south of Samoa, according to the geological survey.

Filipo Ilaoa, deputy director of the American Samoa office in Honolulu, said that the tsunami struck the territory's coast in "a matter of minutse after the quake and that many residents would not have had much time to run for higher ground.

"American Samoa is a small island, and most of the residents are around the coastline," he said.  "There was no warning or anything at all. By the time the alert was out of the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center, it had already hit."

In Samoa, the authorities were expecting rescue assistance and relief aid from New Zealand and Australia, Mr. Malava said.

In Sumatra on Wednesday, officials feared the death toll was likely to rise. Priyadi Kardono, a spokesman for the National Disaster Management Agency, said Thursday that at least 200 people had died. But the toll was almost certain to increase, given the number of people who the authorities said were still trapped in the rubble of buildings. 

Reporting was contributed by Norimitsu Onishi from Jakarta, Indonesia; Brian Knowlton from Washington; Meraiah Foley from Sydney, Australia; and Andrew C. Revkin from New York.