Tidal Waves

Rocking an infant nephew in her arms, Mary Poloai stood outside the main entrance of the imposing Samoan Congregational Christian Church in Carson on Wednesday staring up at the sky and fighting back tears. "I'm so sad that I can't think straight," said Poloai, 58, one of more than 100 people who gathered at a special prayer service for victims of the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Samoa and American Samoa early Tuesday. "They still haven't found my mother's sisters," she said.

A massive earthquake struck off the Solomon Islands today, sending a tsunami crashing into villages on the country's west coast and leaving at least four people missing, officials said. The magnitude 8 quake triggered tsunami warnings throughout the South Pacific and as far north as Hawaii, although officials canceled the alert after the danger period passed.

Thousands of residents camped out overnight on a hill above a devastated town in the western Solomon Islands after a tsunami washed away coastal villages, killing at least 13 people. The death toll was expected to rise. A wall of water reportedly 30 feet high struck the island of Choiseul and swept a third of a mile inland, while smaller but still destructive waves surged ashore elsewhere. Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The first boatloads of international aid reached survivors of a devastating tsunami in the Solomon Islands, but officials warned of a dire food shortage if supplies don't quickly get to hundreds of people camped on hillsides. At least 28 people died in Monday's tsunami and quake, measured at a magnitude of 8.1 by the U.S. Geological Survey. Disaster officials said the toll was expected to rise as rescue crews reached flattened villages.

Disaster officials said Wednesday that medical staffers had been overwhelmed by the number of injured tsunami survivors and feared outbreaks of disease because of unhygienic conditions and the lack of fresh water and food. Fred Fakarii, chairman of the National Disaster Management Council, said, "The conditions at Gizo are such that these are likely things to happen unless action is taken quickly."

An airport in the Solomon Islands reopened for regular flights, easing aid delivery to the largest population center hammered by a magnitude 8.1 quake and killer waves Monday. Four International Red Cross boats laden with medical and shelter supplies were heading out of Gizo today toward outlying villages. Scattered cases of dysentery were reported. Officials still fear malaria and cholera could break out in hillside camps where conditions remained unsanitary.

Shops along the Solomon Islands' battered coastline reopened as aid began trickling to the region's outer atolls, a week after an offshore earthquake sent walls of water slamming into the coast. Vendors returned to their stalls along the main street in the town of Gizo for the first time since the magnitude 8.1 quake shook the Solomons' Western Province on April 2, killing at least 35 people and leaving 7,000 homeless.

An earthquake in remote southern Chile set off a landslide of rocks that smashed into a narrow fjord, causing massive 25-foot waves that swept away 10 beachgoers. Three bodies were recovered Sunday. Rescuers were searching the cold Pacific waters for the other missing people after the magnitude 6.2 quake Saturday, authorities said.

BANDA ACEH, Indonesia -- Indonesia will build a $7.5-million tsunami museum in Aceh province to commemorate the 230,000 people who died when towering waves crashed into Asian coastlines nearly three years ago. Architect Ridwan Kamil won a contest to design the museum, which will look like a traditional wooden house on stilts, said competition judge Kamal Arief. Names of the victims will be inscribed on the wall inside a towering chimneylike installation, said Arief, also a local architect.

A powerful earthquake that struck off Indonesia generated a 10-foot-high tsunami, but the full force of the waves moved toward open sea instead of the shore, a seismologist said Thursday. At least 10 people were killed and scores injured in the three strongest tremors, which struck within a 24-hour period. Hundreds slept Thursday night in parks or on sidewalks. The 8.4-magnitude quake that first shook Southeast Asia on Wednesday was the strongest this year.