Rescuers reached scenes of stunning devastation on Wednesday after a killer tsunami obliterated Samoan island villages, killing at least 148 people and leaving scores more missing. As distraught relatives picked through the rubble of homes and tourist resorts destroyed by Tuesday's 8.0-magnitude earthquake that triggered a tsunami, aid workers were left breathless at the catastrophe.
"The devastation was astronomical, worse than anything I have ever seen," said Peter Bendinelli, head of the non-profit group Caritas Samoa. The death toll is expected to rise dramatically after the Samoan islands' worst quake in nearly a century unleashed walls of water that pounded the coast, echoing Asia's deadly 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
Survivors described seeing truckloads of bodies in Samoa, an idyllic Pacific holiday destination which counted 110 dead, and expected the toll to rise further as bodies are recovered from wrecked buildings and the sea.
"It's not paradise any more - it's hell on earth," one survivor told Australia's Sky News as the morgue at Apia's hospital was forced to use a refrigerated shipping container to help handle overflow bodies. Entire villages were laid to waste and the pristine white beaches that once wooed bathers were strewn with the mangled wreckage of buildings and cars as well as luggage, furniture and poignant personal items.
"We lost everything," said Meleisea Sa, a village chief in the decimated fishing hamlet of Poutasi, as villagers searched for loved ones and personal possessions in the twisted ruins of their homes. "I must rebuild this, or I have nothing," he said as he salvaged parts of his ruined house near four generations of family graves completely destroyed by the waves. "I look at the water now and I am frightened," he told AFP. At least 31 were killed in neighbouring American Samoa and seven lost their lives when the tsunami hit Tonga, 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away.
Looters roamed the devastated streets of the American Samoan capital Pago Pago in search of food and other items after 7.5 meter waves (25 feet) smashed homes and hurled cars into treetops. Raiders were targeting liquor and cigarettes and other saleable items, but "were mainly taking food, frozen chickens and things like that," said local journalist Aufage Fausia.