Washington, October 03: Samoa is planning a mass burial for victims of a tsunami that devastated the Pacific island earlier this week, the government said, as the death toll from the disaster crept towards 200.
Some families were already burying their loved ones in unmarked graves on high ground less ravaged by Tuesday’s walls of water that wiped out coastal settlements, but Samoa has offered a mass funeral for around 100 others.
“The Government has met with the families of the dead and made the offer of a national burial and is offering a place for all those victims to be buried together,” Government press secretary Uale Papalii Paimalelagi told AFP.
“Some of the victims have already been taken by their families and buried, so we expect around 100 to be laid to rest in the mass burial,” he said, adding that it was up to relatives to accept the offer, but that most had agreed.
The ceremony was tentatively planned for Tuesday but may be pushed back at the request of the families, said a senior official in the office of Women, Village Council and Social Development Minister Fiame Mataafa Naomi.
“A mass burial is in the pipeline. It has been discussed and we are planning it for Tuesday, but I think some of the families would like to postpone the date,” she said.
The mass burial plans were revealed as the number of those feared dead in the region following the tsunami spawned by a massive 8.0-magnitude undersea quake reached at least 180, with officials warning it would rise further.
At least 139 people were feared dead in Samoa, with 123 confirmed dead and 16 missing. There were 32 confirmed dead in neighbouring American Samoa and another nine killed in Tonga, about 1,000 kilometres away.
Heartwrenching accounts were emerging of nine people killed in a single family as dead children were found under rubble and in treetops, underlining the extent of the catastrophe in the remote South Seas islands.
Mizanur Rahman, the head of Apia’s morgue that is using refrigerated containers to hold the bodies overflowing from the main building, said the Samoa death toll was “150-plus”, taking the regional total to at least 191.
“That’s what I believe, and the bodies are still coming,” he told AFP.
At least seven foreigners were among the dead in Samoa, a popular tropical getaway turned into a disaster area. At least four Australians, a New Zealander and two South Koreans are confirmed dead.
But three days after the disaster, the death toll was still rising in Samoa, where thousands were left homeless and hundreds injured when the tsunami flattened tourist resorts and fishing hamlets.
“Volunteers are still finding bodies and as time goes on the chances of finding people alive are slimmer and slimmer,” said Rosemarie North of the Samoa Red Cross.
“I think we have to assume the missing are probably dead.”
Aid workers assisted by military were bringing fresh water, food and material for shelters to survivors who have been housed in makeshift camps as fears of an outbreak of disease in the tropical heat grew.
Samoa’s government said the disaster had wrought at least $US57.8 million ($66.47 million) in damage with the total expected to climb.
In American Samoa, most search and rescue operations have come to an end, with 32 confirmed dead, swathes of coastline wrecked and more than 1,000 homeless people huddled in shelters.
Governor Togiola Tulafono told the US Federal Emergency Management Agency by phone that “they had essentially completed the bulk of the search and rescue”, according to FEMA chief Craig Fugate.
“They had a few missing people that they were still searching for but he felt the situation was stabilising, and has adjusted his request to focus more now on life-sustaining operations including additional generator support and power restoration on the island.”
—Agencies