Savali editor Tupuola Terry Tavita (in red vest) helps recover a body on a plastic dinghy in an area near Malaela ravaged by the tsunami. Photo: Rudy Bartley/WTmedia

Pacific.Scoop
By Tupuola Terry Tavita in Aleipata

At 10.00am on the day the deadly tsunami struck the southern coast of Samoa’s island of Upolu, we arrived at the village of Malaela in the Aleipata district – among the first people to get there.

The whole area looked like those devastating television images of Aceh, Indonesia, after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

Houses were completely gone. There were boats and roofs strewn on the road, cars parked on the beach had been tossed 100 meters into the bush. A couple were dangling from trees.

Whole villages were simply reduced to rubble. Others simply showed no trace that houses had even been there – they were completely under water.

We stopped at one scene where a handful of people were trying to pull hopefully survivors from under a roof. We helped. The woman and the boy underneath the pile of timber and roofing iron did not survive.

We continued on, me driving and Rudy Bartley rolling his camera.

At times the road was completely wiped out. We had to get out and clear a path in front of people’s houses, others came to help. Other times were had to drive through the swamp hoping there were no nails in water that would puncture our tires.

“My house was there,” a man pointed out to the sea.

“I can’t find my two children.”

Turned into swamp
Lalomanu, one of the most beautiful villages and a resort mecca in the country was simply reduced to a brown swamp.

We stopped and talked to a German tourist.

“We stayed at the Taufua resort,” he said.

“For two weeks the nice woman who ran the restaurant and bar looked after us very well. She’s gone. They can’t find her. So is the owner of the resort.”

A victim of the tsunami is ferried ashore in a plastic dinghy to her loved ones. Photo: Rudy Bartley/WTmedia

People were picking through the rubble. There were lots of dead and very few helping hands left. We loaded some bodies onto a pick up. A man called from under the trees for help. He had just found his mother.

We waded through the infested waters towing a plastic dinghy and loaded her on it. Her body was bloated.

People were milling around a mangled jeep. We helped pull out a young girl sandwiched in the driver’s seat. The poor girl probably ran into the car to escape the waves, but there’s no hiding from this disaster. Sad.

“The waves were higher than the coconut trees,” one man told us.

“We heard the earthquake in the morning and a man came running out shouting, tsunami!” said one tourist.

Scrambled up hill
“We just ran and scrambled up the hill.

The hundred or so tourists he said were still up there traumatised, afraid to come down.

Lalomanu District Hospital was even more depressing. Dead bodies were strewn over the floor. Some covered with lavalavas, some with mats.

Pickups came from the villages to unload the dead at Lalomanu District Hospital. Photo: Rudy Bartley/WTmedia

I counted 22 bodies.  Pickups were still coming from the villages unloading the dead while more pickups arrived to load on the bodies and take them to the main hospital in Apia.

Most of the dead were old people, women and children. There were also some tourists.

A New Zealand man was sitting leaning against the wall, crying uncontrollably. He’d just lost his wife of 30 years.

After helping some tourists up the hill, a young stocky lad who worked at the Faofao Beach Fales said he ran back to get his grandmother.

“She pushed me away and told me to save myself. I held onto her when the waves struck but lost my grip. I couldn’t find her.”

Battered body
His body was covered with bruises.

Others appeared desensitised by all the deaths.

“Aukaki and Sofia were floating behind my house,” a teenager blurted out as they exchanged stories with her friends.

I spoke to a Lalomanu matai who only had regrets.

“For many years the Prime Minister told us to move upland. That it was not safe on the beach. The government even built roads for us to move to. We should’ve listened. Half our people are gone.”

Miracle baby
But there was some hope in all this distress.

A man came in with a baby, he said was his son. The family had simply split when the waves pounded and left the baby in the house, which was completely obliterated, he told us.

Later they found the baby on the beach. Hungry, a bit of sand in the eyes and very much alive. Uninjured.

Saleapaga
Like neighbouring Lalomanu, Saleapaga also was reduced to rubble.

We stopped and spoke to a boy, about 12, picking through the rubble. He was looking for his five-year old brother.

And the death toll appears very personal.

“That family lost three people. The woman and her two children,” he told us.

“There were about six people in that family,” he pointed to what used to be a hut on the beach.

“All are missing.”

By this time pickup loads full of people were arriving from Apia, coming through Falelili way. Relatives coming to find their family members in this area.

Tupuola Terry Tavita is editor of the Samoan government newspaper Savali. He was among the first journalists to reach the area devastated by the tsunami.

* The confirmed death toll from the devastating tsunami that hit the Samoa islands and Tonga has risen to 170 with at least 10 more people unaccounted for, officials have reported.

Other Scoop coverage of the tsunami