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A street in Samoa - Source: ONE News -
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A popular resort area of Samoa has been "devastated" by the powerful earthquake and tsunami that struck the Pacific island nation, Samoa's deputy prime minister says.
Deputy Samoan PM Misa Telefoni said local residents had only minutes to respond to the quake and the subsequent tsunami.
"With the location and the intensity ... I don't know (if) anything better could have been done," Telefoni said as he prepared to board a plane from Auckland to Samoa's capital Apia.
"People were saying that there was the shake and the ocean went out within five minutes, so that's pretty fast and that makes it extremely difficult."
Telefoni said the island of Manono, off the west coast of the main island of Upolu, had been hit hard by the tsunami.
Two of Samoa's most popular resorts, the upmarket Sinalei Reef Resort and Coconuts Beach Resort, are located in that area, on the southern side of Upolu.
Telefoni said his cousin Joe Annandale, the owner of Sinalei, was in a critical condition and Annandale's wife had died.
"We've had some devastating news about the owner of Sinalei resort, Joe Annandale, that he's in critical condition and his wife Tui has drowned.
"We've heard that most of the resorts are totally devastated on that side of the island.
"We've heard that the death toll is anything from 14 to 40.
"We've had a pretty grim picture painted of all that coast."
Telefoni said the injured had been taken to Apia hospital.
The quake, with a magnitude between 8.0 and 8.3, struck at 6.48am Tuesday local time (0348 Wednesday AEST), midway between Samoa and American Samoa - 200km from Samoa and 190km from the US territory.
Telefoni said he did not believe that authorities could have responded any better, given the quake was so close.
"The main damage is our relationship with the ocean, which we grew up seeing as our friend and a place where we can fish and swim. That's going to change forever," he said.
"The difficulty is that it now appears that the fault was very, very close to us and we only had minutes rather than hours to respond.
"... And what's becoming very, very clear is we've got to make sure for the future that our disaster response is really up to it, so we can evacuate people before they're actually in danger."
