Towering tsunami waves spawned by a powerful earthquake swept ashore on Samoa and American Samoa early Tuesday, flattening villages, killing at least 34 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 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.
The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, struck around dawn about 20 miles below to ocean floor, 120 miles (190 kilometers) from American Samoa, a U.S. territory that is home to 65,000 people, and 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Samoa.
Mike Reynolds, superintendent of the National Park of American Samoa, was quoted as saying four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet high roared ashore soon afterward, reaching up to a mile inland. Holly Bundock, spokeswoman for the National Park Service’s Pacific West Region in Oakland, Calif., said Reynolds spoke to officials from under a coconut tree uphill from Pago Pago Harbor and reported that the park’s visitor center and offices appeared to have been destroyed.
Bundock said Reynolds and another park service staffer had been able to locate only 20 percent of the park’s 13 to 15 employees and 30 to 50 volunteers.
