What happened when a tsunami hit in the American Samoa’s capital, Pago Pago?”
PAGO PAGO, American Samoa — A powerful Pacific Ocean earthquake spawned towering tsunami waves that swept ashore on Samoa and American Samoa early Tuesday, flattening villages, killing at least 39 people and leaving dozens of workers missing at devastated National Park Service facilities. Cars and people were swept out to sea by the fast-churning water as survivors fled to high ground, where they remained huddled hours later. Signs of devastation were everywhere, with a giant boat getting washed ashore and coming to rest on the edge of a highway and floodwaters swallowing up cars and homes. American Samoa Gov. Togiola Tulafono said at least 50 were injured, in addition to the deaths. Hampered by power and communications outages, officials struggled to assess the casualties and damage. But the death toll seemed sure to rise, with dead bodies already piling up at a hospital in Samoa. The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, struck around dawn about 20 miles below the ocean floor,
A powerful 8.3-magnitude earthquake struck in the South Pacific between Samoa and American Samoa around dawn today, sending terrified residents fleeing for higher ground as a tsunami swept ashore, flattening at least one village. There were no immediate reports of fatalities. The quake hit at 6.48am local time midway between the two island groups. In Apia, families reported shaking that lasted for up to three minutes. The US Geological Survey said the quake struck 20 miles (35 km) below the ocean floor, 120 miles from American Samoa and 125 miles from Samoa. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre in Honolulu, Hawaii issued a general alert for the South Pacific region, from American Samoa to New Zealand. It said there were indications a tsunami wave could be “destructive” along some coastlines. The centre issued a tsunami warning for numerous islands in the Pacific, including the Samoas, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Fiji, New Zealand, French Polynesia and Palmyra Island. A tsunami watch was iss
A National Weather Service official told The Associated Press that at least 14 people were dead in American Samoa, a United States territory that falls about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, and officials in the island nation of Samoa told Reuters that as many as 100 people died there, with 20 confirmed dead. The waves were caused by an 8.0-magnitude underwater earthquake that struck 125 miles south of Apia, Samoa, according to the United States Geologic Survey. Waves in American Samoa’s capital, Pago Pago, rose 5.1 feet above normal sea level, according to the National Weather Services’s Pacific Tsunami Warning Center.
