Death toll in Samoas tsunami reaches 150

Samoa – Stunned Samoans combed through the sodden wreckage of their lives and told of the terror of being trapped underwater or flung inland by a tsunami that ravaged towns and killed at least 150 people in the South Pacific. Officials expect the death toll from Tuesday's disaster to rise as more areas are searched.

"The devastation caused was complete," Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele told New Zealand's National Radio on Wednesday after inspecting the southeast coast of the main island of Upolu, the most heavily hit area. "In some villages absolutely no house was standing. All that was achieved within 10 minutes by the very powerful tsunami."

His own village of Lesa was washed away, as were many others in Samoa and nearby American Samoa and Tonga . A magnitude 8.0 quake struck off Samoa at 6:48 a.m. local time ( 1:48 p.m. EDT ; 1748 GMT) Tuesday. The islands soon were engulfed by four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet (4 to 6 meters) high that reached up to a mile (1.5 kilometers) inland.

"To me it was like monster just black water coming to you. It wasn't a wave that breaks, it was a full force of water coming straight," said Luana Tavale, an American Samoa government employee. Tuilaepa said the death toll in Samoa was 110, mostly elderly and young children. At least 31 people were killed on American Samoa , Gov. Togiola Tulafono said. Officials in the island nation of Tonga said nine people had been killed.

Samoan police commander Lilo Maiava predicted the toll would rise. "It may take a week, two weeks or even three weeks" to complete the search for the many people still missing, he said.

The quake was centered about 120 miles (190 kilometers) south of the nation of Samoa, formerly part of New Zealand, which has about 220,000 people, and American Samoa, a U.S. territory of 65,000. The two lie about halfway between New Zealand and Hawaii , just east of the international date line. That means the tsunami hit Tuesday morning there, while it was already Wednesday in Asia .

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said it issued an alert, but the waves came so quickly that residents only had about 10 minutes to respond. New Zealand school teacher Charlie Pearse choked back tears as she spoke to New Zealand 's TV One News from an Apia hospital bed in Samoa , recalling how she was trapped underwater and thought she was going to die.

She was in the back of a truck trying to outrun the tsunami with about 20 children when a wave tossed the truck and it landed on top of them. "We all went under the water and I think a number of the children died instantly," Pearse said.