Samoa devastated by earthquate, tsunami: CEN 10.09.09 p 5. October 23, 2009
Posted by geoconger in Anglican Church of Aotearoa New Zealand & Polynesia, Church of England Newspaper, Disaster Relief.trackback
An earthquake and tsunami in the Central Pacific has devastated the southern coast of Samoa. On Sept 30 at 1748 GMT the 8.3-magnitude earthquake located 120 miles south of the Samoan capital of Apia spawned a 15 feet high tidal wave that inundated the coast. The earthquake and resulting tsunami left 135 dead and eight missing in Samoa, 32 dead in American Samoa and nine dead in Tonga.
About 20 villages on Samoa’s southern coast of the main island of Upolu are thought to have been leveled, while popular beachside resorts have been wiped out. Roads, power lines and telecommunications have been badly damaged.
Archdeacon Taimalelagi Fagamalama Tuatagaloa-Leota, a Samoan national living in New Zealand reported that one of her sons was in a van that was swept out to sea by the tsunami and was critically injured and is in an Apia hospital, while one of the archdeacon’s daughters-in-law lost at least 10 members of her family.
Her home village, Poutasi, on the southern coast of Upolu, “looks like it’s been bombed,” she told Anglican Taonga.
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