It was two years on Thursday since the Samoa tsunami. A Church leader in Samoa says the sudden loss of life from the tsunami will always be remembered.
The Secretary General of the Samoa Council of Churches, the Reverend Ma’auga Motu, says a ceremony will be held on Sunday to commemorate the dead.
The Reverend Motu says the memorial service on Sunday will be held at the government’s burial site at Tafaigata. Some villages conducted their own ceremonies on Thursday to remember the the dead.
“The victims of the tsunami will never be removed from the memories and from the minds of our people. And their death was a very sudden ache in my country, it was a very sudden suffering that came into the country. And to take a hundred and more people, it’s too much for us,” he said.
On 29 September 2009 a rare double earthquake occurred in the Pacific “Ring of Fire”, where continental plates meet in the Earth’s crust. Scientists believe the simultaneous earthquakes – measuring 8.0 and 7.9 – occurred under the ocean floor about 70km apart, with one “hiding” the other. 186 people died when the tsunami hit Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga.
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