The massive 8.0 earthquake that rocked the Pacific yesterday sent tsunami waves crashing down on American Samoa.

This video, posted earlier today on YouTube, shows the incredible damage in Leone, American Samoa. Houses were washed away. Cars were left stranded in trees. Bloomberg is now reporting that at least 141 were killed. “You can imagine the sheer force,” the narrator says.

In this second video from the Wall Street Journal, Simon Louisson from Dow Jones Newswires in New Zealand, describes the damage and reports that New Zealanders prepared for the possibility of a tsunami strike.

Yuo can see more videos and a slideshow from American Samoa here.

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Though George W. Bush is not the best friend of those caring about the environment, he’s going to do the right thing days before stepping off. Some 200,000 square miles of the amazingly beautiful and biologically diverse areas in the Pacific, are going to be declared “marine national monuments” preventing oil drilling or other extraction procedures.

The protected area which includes a group of islands, atolls and some of the waters around the Northern Mariana Islands in the western Pacific, will save huge underwater mud volcanoes, coral reefs, and rare species of whales.

“This historic action by President Bush protects some of the world’s most unique and biologically significant ocean habitat. Together with the Hawaii marine monument established two years ago, this marks the end of an era in which humans have increasingly understood the need to conserve vanishing wild places on land but failed to comprehend the similar plight of our oceans. It comes none too soon,” Joshua Reichert, said the managing director for Pew Environment Group.

He did the right thing, isn’t it?

Source: Reuters
Image courtesy of luigig