As distraught relatives picked through the rubble of homes and tourist resorts destroyed by Tuesday's 8.0-magnitude earthquake that triggered a tsunami, aid workers were left breathless at the catastrophe.

"The devastation was astronomical, worse than anything I have ever seen," said Peter Bendinelli, head of the non-profit group Caritas Samoa.

The death toll is expected to rise dramatically after the Samoan islands' worst quake in nearly a century unleashed walls of water that pounded the coast, echoing Asia's deadly December 2004 tsunami.

Survivors described seeing truckloads of bodies in Samoa, an idyllic Pacific holiday destination which counted 110 dead, and expected the toll to rise further as bodies are recovered from wrecked buildings and the sea.

"It's not paradise any more -- it's hell on earth," one survivor told Australia's Sky News as the morgue at Apia's hospital was forced to use a refrigerated shipping container to help handle overflow bodies.

Entire villages were laid to waste and the pristine white beaches that once wooed bathers were strewn with the mangled wreckage of buildings and cars as well as luggage, furniture and poignant personal items.

"We lost everything," said Meleisea Sa, a village chief in the decimated fishing hamlet of Poutasi, as villagers searched for loved ones and personal possessions in the twisted ruins of their homes.

"I must rebuild this, or I have nothing," he said as he salvaged parts of his ruined house near four generations of family graves completely destroyed by the waves. "I look at the water now and I am frightened," he told AFP.

At least 31 were killed in neighbouring American Samoa and seven lost their lives when the tsunami hit Tonga, 1,000 kilometres (600 miles) away.

Looters roamed the devastated streets of the American Samoan capital Pago Pago in search of food and other items after 7.5 metre (25-foot) waves smashed homes and hurled cars into treetops.

Raiders were targeting liquor and cigarettes and other saleable items, but "were mainly taking food, frozen chickens and things like that," said local journalist Aufage Fausia.

Some 2,500 people were forced from their homes by the disaster and were being housed in relief shelters in the remote US outpost that President Barack Obama declared a major disaster zone.

Two US disaster assistance teams had arrived in American Samoa and were providing critically needed aid including emergency power and medical supplies, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) chief Craig Fugate said.

"We have over 140 people on the ground... coordinating and supporting the government's emergency response," Fugate told reporters on a conference call.

He said they had begun distributing food and water and other emergency aid.

As aid planes also arrived in Samoa from Australia and New Zealand, rescuers bringing food, clothing, medicine and fresh drinking water to survivors saw the full extent of the catastrophe.

Australian planes carrying search-and-rescue, medical experts and other items flew into the Samoan capital, Apia, to join the search for residents and tourists and help treat the waves of injured.

But getting enough aid to thousands of desperate survivors in such a remote spot is a tough challenge for rescuers, who warned it could take until "well into the weekend" to help everyone left homeless, hungry and thirsty.

As emergency supplies arrived in the worst hit areas, villagers chanced across the body of a missing woman and her baby granddaughter dumped in a bush by the water's terrifying force.

The devastated southern area of Samoa is home to about 70 villages and was also a popular tourist hot spot. Four Australians, two Koreans, one New Zealander and a British toddler were among the dead.

Tonga reported significant damage on the small island of Niuatoputapu with at least seven dead and three missing. However, other countries saw only large waves at worst despite a brief, Pacific-wide tsunami warning.

earlier related report
Tsunami 'Ground Zero': resort village wiped off the map
Makeshift crosses dot the shattered landscape of the Samoan tsunami's "Ground Zero", a village of tropical homes and beachside resorts which has been literally wiped off the map.

Upturned cars, toppled concrete pillars and mounds of debris mark the site of Lalomanu, home to hundreds of people just 24 hours earlier. Now, not even a single building remains.

Tony Hill, head of the joint-agency aid operation, said the village was "just Ground Zero" of the disaster which has left at least 148 people dead in the Samoan islands and Tonga.

"For Samoa this is just real devastation, I have never seen anything like this before," he said.

"I have been overseas where there have been major incidents but this is a major for me."

As Hill spoke, rescuers pulled a tourist's backpack containing family photographs from wreckage where bodies were found earlier. Red Cross volunteer coordinator Lapa Tofilau said the village had yielded dozens of corpses.

"We're still pulling out bodies now but we have already taken out 30-40 people today alone," he told AFP.

"We cannot account for the bodies that families have taken themselves to the hopsital or just buried. We are trying everything we can to find missing bodies."

Police and Australian army rescuers combed the hillside for victims and formed a grid to search every inch of the wrecked village, as New Zealand's airforce patrolled seas looking for bodies washed away by the waves.

Lalomanu's pristine white sands, normally scattered with sun-loungers and basking tourists, were strewn with personal effects and furniture, with a red velvet armchair lying beside a felled power pole.

Dozens of police fanned out in formation along the beach, using sticks to probe the detritus for bodies buried beneath. Light rain fell from ominous, overcast skies.

Similar scenes were visible elsewhere in the Samoan archipelago whose coast was shaken by a massive 8.0 magnitude earthquake then swamped by deadly tsunamis on Tuesday.

In nearby Poutasi, villagers made the heartbreaking discovery of the bodies of a woman and her baby granddaughter dumped in a bush by the giant waves.

Clean-up work, involving cranes and gangs of workmen, paused as a solemn religious procession passed to honour the two victims.

One villager told how her aunt was swept against a beached fishing trawler, fracturing her skull, as she tried to outrun the sudden five-foot (1.5 metres) waves.

"No, no, no time. No bells, no siren. In one minute, right when they saw the wave, it was here," resident Lonnie Mai told AFP.

In other areas, a fishing boat was flung into a village hall and a car was seen in the second floor of a building, as large swathes of countryside lay flooded. Debris was scattered over miles (kilometres) of once-idyllic beach.

Residents, many of whom slept under the stars for fear of returning to their homes, told how they had just seconds to flee the deadly waves.

"I don't know how to describe it, it was like a mountain coming out of the sea," Meleisea Sa, a Poutasi village chief, told AFP.

"The last thing that I saw was how my house came down. We lost everything. I can still hear the fierce sound of the waves and the sea coming up."

Sa returned to salvage parts of his house and reflect on the loss of four generations of family graves swept away by the water's force.

"I must rebuild this, or I have nothing," he said. "I look at the water now and I am frightened."

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