Tsunami warning:7.9 magnitude quake strikes off American Samoa

[pkd]

7.9 magnitude quake strikes off American Samoa

Updated at: 2410 PST, Tuesday, September 29, 2009
WASHINGTON: A 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck off American Samoa on Tuesday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The epicenter of the quake was located 120 miles (190 km) southwest of the remote Pacific island. It struck at a depth of 20.5 miles (33 km).

An earthquake of this magnitude is capable of causing a tsunami, although there were no immediate reports of this occurring.

 

[abbasniazi]

We wish and pray for the safety of all those who could become victims of this incident and hope this doesn't turn into a tragedy...

 

[pkd]

Deadly tsunami wreaks devastation across Samoa in the South Pacific

Up to 63 people were killed and local villages and holiday resorts were completely washed away when a deadly tsunami struck the South Pacific island of Samoa early this morning.

Tsunami waves up to 20 feet high, triggered by an earthquake with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, swept ashore on Samoa and neighbouring American Samoa, flattening villages, killing scores of locals and leaving dozens missing.

About 20 minutes after the massive earthquake rocked the Samoan capital of Apia, towering waves hit the southern coast of the Upolo island where many of the holiday resorts are located. The water reached up to a mile inland.

A local who works at the Ili Ili resort on the south coast of Upolo described the horror of watching the water recede before the enormous wave crashed ashore just after dawn.

“We had just finished sweeping and we looked out to sea and there was nothing, no water, there was only coral,” the resort worker told The Times.

“Then after about five minutes we saw the big wave coming and I said: ‘we have to flee’. So we left in the car and we could see the wave – which was about 3m high – coming closer. We were driving down the main road and we could see the wave.”

He said there was nothing left of their resort: “We don’t have a resort anymore. Every single thing has gone. The boat, the bungalows, the restaurant ? it is gone.”

Graeme Ansell, a New Zealander in Samoa, told a New Zealand radio station that the beach village of Sau Sau Beach Fale had been flattened by the waves. “It was very quick. The whole village has been wiped out,” Mr Ansell said.

“There’s not a building standing. We’ve all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need ’round here.”

Cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning waters as survivors fled to high ground, where they remained huddled hours later. Hampered by power and communications outages, officials struggled to assess the casualties and damage.

It was reported at least 14 people were killed in four different villages on the main island of Tutuila, while 20 people died neighbouring Samoa. However police later confirmed the death toll had hit 63, and could reach up to 100.

“It's believed as of now, there could be a number close to 100 deaths," Ausegalia Mulipola, assistant chief executive of Western Samoa's disaster management office, said.

"They are still continuing the searches for any missing bodies in the area. There have been reports of villages, where most of the houses have been run over by the sea."

Dr Stephen Rogers, the honorary British Consul in Apia, said there were reports of another 20 bodies being transported from the southern coast to the main hospital in Apia.

He said most of those were believed to be Samoan locals.

Dr Rogers confirmed there were at least 20 Britons in Samoa at the time of the tsunami, however none were believed to be injured.

“There was a young British couple who fled their resort to higher ground in the hills, they’ve lost all their belongings, their clothes, their passports .. but they are apparently safe,” he said.

In the capital buildings shook when the earthquake struck, Dr Rogers said.

“The earthquake was very strong but I’ve just been outside and there seems to be no structural damage,” he said. “The buildings shook and it was very frightening but the only real damage seems to have been caused by the wave on the south coast.”

Residents in both Samoa and American Samoa reported being shaken awake by the quake, which lasted two to three minutes. The earthquake was followed by three aftershocks of at least 5.6 magnitude.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a general alert from American Samoa to New Zealand; Tonga suffered some coastal damage from 13-foot waves.

A spokesman at the main hospital in Apia said they had been inundated with casualties but had no confirmation yet of a total number of dead or injured.

The US Federal Emergency Management Agency has deployed an emergency team to help American Samoa, while Australia and New Zealand governments were also preparing to send help to Samoa.

 

[Righteous_Fire]

Scores Are Killed as Tsunami Hits Samoa Islands ​

A powerful tsunami generated by an undersea earthquake on Tuesday has killed at least 89 people and wiped out several villages on the tropical islands of American Samoa and Samoa, according to government officials, the police and local residents.

The earthquake, with a magnitude of 8.0, struck around dawn on Tuesday, as many residents were preparing for work and getting their children ready for school. Over the next 12 hours, 15 smaller quakes rumbled through the Samoan islands region, and 14 more were recorded near Tonga, to the south, according to the United States Geological Survey.

At least 24 people were killed in American Samoa, according to officials there, and the territory’s 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. There was also widespread devastation reported in the territory’s capital, Pago Pago.

In a statement from the White House, President Obama declared that “a major disaster exists in the Territory of American Samoa,” and he authorized federal aid to supplement local recovery efforts.

Filipo Ilaoa, deputy director of the American Samoan office in Honolulu, said that the tsunami struck the territory’s coast in “a matter of minutes” 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.”

On Samoa, 65 people had died and 145 had been injured, according to the general manager of the National Health Service, who spoke Wednesday afternoon to the BBC.

There were reports late Wednesday that six people had been killed on Tonga, but those reports could not be immediately verified.

Officials and rescue teams worked throughout Wednesday to assess the damage and to begin relief efforts, and they said witnesses had seen heavy destruction in the southern parts of Samoa and American Samoa, a United States territory with about 60,000 residents.

Samoa, governed by New Zealand until gaining its independence in 1962, has a population of 180,000 spread across its islands. Upolu, the second largest of the islands, has numerous resorts and guesthouses along its southern shores, and initial reports from the coast described widespread destruction.

A Red Cross worker, Sati Young, speaking to Radio New Zealand, said waves 10 feet high had flattened beachside resorts on Upolu and that residents told him the tourist zone of Lalomanu had been crushed by a 33-foot wall of water. Graeme Ansell, a New Zealander, told the radio station that every building had been destroyed in the village of Faofao Beach Fales on Upolu’s southeastern coast.

“There’s not a building standing,” he said. “We’ve all clambered up hills, and one of our party has a broken leg. There will be people in a great lot of need around here.”

Damaged telephone lines on both islands hampered efforts to count the casualties and obtain comprehensive damage assessments. The earthquake struck below the ocean about 120 miles southwest of American Samoa and 125 miles south of Samoa, and it was centered only 11 miles below the seabed, according to the geological agency.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center at Ewa Beach, Hawaii, raised a regionwide alert that extended from American Samoa to New Zealand, though minimal damage was reported elsewhere.

On Wednesday morning, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami advisory for the entire eastern coast of Japan. The advisory carried warnings of high waves, but by early evening the agency scaled back the advisory to parts of southern Japan, Okinawa and northern Hokkaido.

Tsunami awareness is relatively high in this earthquake-prone part of the world, particularly after the devastating earthquake and tsunami on Dec. 26, 2004, which killed 227,898 people around the Indian Ocean, according to the United States Geological Survey.

Both Samoan islands are just east of the international date line, which is why it was early Tuesday morning when the quake occurred, but it was already early Wednesday in Japan, China and Australia.
​

NYT

 

[Righteous_Fire]

Indonesia quake death toll at 100-200: disaster agency​

A powerful earthquake, which struck near the city of Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island on Wednesday, has killed between 100 and 200 people, a disaster agency official said early on Thursday morning.

Priyadi Kardono, spokesman for the national disaster agency, said about 500 houses had caved in and around 100 people were buried under the rubble, according to officials in the area.

The 7.6 magnitude quake hit Padang, West Sumatra, on Wednesday afternoon. Initially thousands of people were believed trapped under collapsed houses and other buildings, but with communications to the area cut, officials have struggled to get details of casualties and damage.

The death toll was likely to rise as many buildings in the city of 900,000 people had collapsed, Vice President Jusuf Kalla told a late night news conference in Jakarta.

TV footage showed piles of debris and smashed houses after the earthquake, which caused widespread panic across the city.

Rustam Pakaya, the head of the health ministry's disaster center in Jakarta, said on Wednesday evening that "thousands of people are trapped in the rubble of buildings."

The main hospital had collapsed, roads were cut off by landslides and Metro Television said the roof of Padang airport had caved in. Thousands were expected to spend the night in the open while a full assessment of the damage would need to wait until daybreak.

The disaster is the latest in a spate of natural and man-made calamities to hit Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago of 226 million people.

Kalla said the government was preparing for an emergency response of up to two months.

Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie said authorities should prepare for the worst. The damage could be on a par with that caused by a 2006 quake in the central Java city of Yogyakarta that killed 5,000 people and damaged 150,000 homes, he said.

"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, adding that broken water pipes had triggered flooding.

His mobile phone was then cut off and officials said power had been severed in the city.

The quake was felt around the region, with some high-rise buildings in Singapore, 440 km (275 miles) to the northeast, evacuating staff. Office buildings also shook in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center canceled an earlier tsunami alert.

A resident called Adi told Metro Television: "For now I can't see dead bodies, just collapsed houses. Some half destroyed, others completely. People are standing around too scared to go back inside. They fear a tsunami."​

Reuters