U.S. & World News

APIA, Samoa (CBS News) ― Stunned Samoans dug through the sodden wreckage of their homes and told of the terror of being trapped underwater or flung inland by the tsunami that ravaged towns and killed at least 149 people in the South Pacific.

Officials expect the death toll to rise as more areas are searched.

"The devastation caused was complete," Samoan Minister Tuilaepa Sailele told New Zealand's National Radio on Wednesday after inspecting the southeast coast of the main island of Upolu, the epicenter of the damage. "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, American Samoa and Tonga.

A magnitude 8.0 quake struck off Samoa at 6:48 a.m. local time (1:48 p.m. EDT) Tuesday. The islands soon were engulfed by four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet high that reached up to a mile inland.

"To me it was like a 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.

Samoa Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele said the death toll there was 110, mostly elderly and young children. At least 30 people were killed on American Samoa, Gov. Togiola Tulafono said. Officials on the island of Tonga said nine people had been killed.

Samoan police commander Lilo Maiava said the toll would rise.

Police searched a ghastly landscape of mud-swept streets, pulverized homes and bodies scattered in a swamp Wednesday as dazed survivors emerged from the muck of the earthquake and tsunami.

Military transports flew medical personnel, food, water and medicine to Samoa and American Samoa, both devastated by a tsunami triggered by the undersea earthquake. A cargo plane from New Zealand brought in a temporary morgue and a body identification team.

Samoans in Southern California were helping, and hurting on Wednesday, reported CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker.

"My husband lost his brother-in-law along with eight children," said Elesa Tofi.

Officials expect the death toll to rise as more areas are searched. Among the hardest hit areas was the southeast coast of Samoa, with authorities reporting that several tourist resorts were wiped out.

"To me it was like a 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.

Survivors fled to higher ground after the magnitude 8.0 quake struck at 6:48 a.m. local time (1:48 p.m. EDT) Tuesday. The residents then were engulfed by four tsunami waves 15 to 20 feet high that reached up to a mile inland.

Joey Cummings is the general manager of a television station in American Samoa. He was filling in for a colleague Tuesday morning as the ground beneath him started to shake. Just minutes later, he was watching the Pacific Ocean rise to his second-story window.

"It was the most intense earthquake I have ever experienced," Cummings told "The Early Show" co-anchor Harry Smith on the phone. "It just kept going, and just wouldn't stop."

The waves splintered houses and left cars and boats scattered about the coastline.

"I was scared. I was shocked," said Didi Afuafi, 28, who was on a bus when the giant waves came ashore on American Samoa. "All the people on the bus were screaming, crying and trying to call their homes. We couldn't get on cell phones. The phones just died on us. It was just crazy."

With the water approaching, the bus driver sped to the top of a nearby mountain, where 300 to 500 people were gathered, including patients evacuated from the main hospital. Among them were newborns with IVs, crying children and frightened elderly people.

A family on the mountain provided food and water, while clergymen led prayers. Afuafi said people were still on edge and feared another quake.

"This is going to be talked about for generations," said Afuafi, who lives just outside the village of Leone, one of the hardest hit areas.

Meanwhile, government official raised the death toll from a Wednesday earthquake on Indonesia's Sumatra island to 467 Thursday morning, as anxious rescuers worked to pull survivors from the rubble even as a powerful aftershock rocked the quake-prone island nation.

Scientists say the Indonesia quakes and the temblor which inundated the Samoas with ocean water were unrelated seismic events.

Officials on the island of Tonga said Thursday nine people had been confirmed killed on the northern island of Niuas following the tsunami, and four critically injured people had been flown out for treatment. Two of the island's three villages were destroyed.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii said it issued an alert, but the waves got to the islands so quickly that residents only had about 10 minutes to respond. Another system designed to alert aid agencies suffered a hardware malfunction that delayed notification, but that did not affect residents.

On Samoa, the two-hour drive from the Apia airport to the heavily damaged southeast coast became little more than a link between flattened villages. Mattresses hung from trees, and utility poles were bent at awkward angles.

It was clear that tourists were among the casualties, but officials said they had no solid number of visitors in the area.

Three of the key resorts on the coast are scenes of "total devastation" while a fourth "has a few units standing on higher ground," Nynette Sass of Samoa's National Disaster Management committee told New Zealand's National Radio on Thursday.

Dr. Ben Makalavea from Apia's main hospital told the broadcaster that some couples can't find their children, and fear they may have been washed out to sea. "One woman we saw was so confused that she doesn't even know where she comes from," he said.

Makalavea added that the hospital needs nurses, doctors, surgeons and blood to treat the increasing numbers of people with broken bones and cuts.

Red Cross relief workers were providing food, clothes and water to thousands of homeless now camping in the wooded hills above the coast. Volunteer Futi Mauigoa said water was in short supply.

"Tonight they are all going to be back up in the hills because the air out here is not really healthy for them," he said of the rotting stench in the disaster area.

In Sale Ataga village, more than 50 police searched for bodies underneath uprooted trees.

Tony Fauena, a 29-year-old farmer, said the bodies of his 35-year-old niece and her 6-month-old son were found Tuesday but four other family members were still missing. "We don't know if the rest are under there or released out to sea," he said.

Suavai Ioane in Voutosi village said he was carried by a wave about 80 yards inland. Eight bodies were found in a nearby swamp.

The quake was centered about 120 miles south of the islands of Samoa, which has about 220,000 people, and American Samoa, a U.S. territory of 65,000.

Officials in the South Pacific islands struggled with power and communications outages.

In American Samoa's capital of Pago Pago, power was expected to be out in some areas for up to a month, and officials said some 2,200 people were in seven shelters across the island.

The waves lifted a building housing a hardware store and carried it across a two-lane highway. Crews later found the two employees in the debris.

A Coast Guard C-130 plane loaded with aid and carrying Federal Emergency Management Agency officials flew from Hawaii to Pago Pago, where debris had been cleared from runways. President Obama declared a major disaster for American Samoa.

Australian officials said they will send an air force plane carrying 20 tons of humanitarian aid, as well as aid officials and medical personnel to Samoa.

New Zealand provided 1 million New Zealand dollars ($710,000) in immediate aid to Samoa, Tonga and the Samoan Red Cross on Thursday. Acting Prime Minister Bill English said it was the first "of a long haul for ... New Zealand ... providing resources."

He said Prime Minister John Key is cutting short his U.S. vacation to fly to Samoa to inspect the damage.

Hundreds of people bombarded American Samoa's radio stations with requests to announce the names of their missing loved ones. Broadcasters urged listeners to contact their families immediately.

The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs said three Australians were among the dead. The British Foreign Office said one Briton was missing and presumed dead.

While the earthquake and tsunami were big, they were not as large as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami that killed more than 230,000 in a dozen countries across Asia.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)