The earthquake hit at 6:48 a.m., followed 10 minutes later by the first of four killer waves.

They were not huge by Hawai'i big-wave standards — just 4 to 10 feet, according to Togiola Tulafono, the governor of American Samoa, who was in Honolulu yesterday.

But in a low-lying, island nation of about 65,000 people, the kinetic energy of the earthquake-born waves was powerful enough to knock out a major bridge, destroy homes and major roads and send cars crashing into one another, Tulafono said yesterday at his office in Honolulu.

Tulafono last night was preparing to board a Coast Guard C-130 cargo plane out of Kalaeloa filled with generators, food and water and return home, braced for what he might see.

His own extended family suffered deaths in one village on the west side of Tutuila Island, Tulafono said.

"You know how it is with Samoa — we're big families from one end to the other," he said. "I don't think anyone's going to be spared in this disaster with fatalities."

After the first wave hit, the ocean receded so far back that it exposed the island's reef, Tulafono said.

Then the most devastating of the waves — the second and third — struck, even before most government offices had opened.

"By the time they got the first warning, the first waves had hit already," Tulafono said. "This is one of those situations that no matter what you do, it would have been impossible to help a lot of people. "

According to reports he received from American Samoa and the Federal Emergency Management Agency yesterday, most of the damage and fatalities occurred at the western end of Tutuila Island around the villages of Leone, Asili and Poloa, where the main road also was damaged, cutting off access.

Even the governor's mansion tucked away in the bay area of Pago Pago toward the center of the island was hit by a four-foot wave, and one of several landslides fell nearby, Tulafono said.

The damage to the major bridge in Pago Pago also cut off access to the east end, where there appeared to be no fatalities.

"It's making relief and assistance very, very difficult in a very populous area of the main island," Tulafono said. "A major connecting bridge in the middle of our bay area was destroyed and the efforts to get people from one side of the bay to the other was heavily compromised because of that. Manual labor had to be used to transport injured and fatalities across the bridge to the other side, where help was waiting to evacuate them."

Preliminary reports also suggested major damage to the nearby Independent State of Samoa, which Tulafono referred to as Western Samoa.

"It seems like the earthquake was felt throughout the Samoan islands and it appears the islands of Western Samoa have also been struck very, very seriously."

American Samoa has suffered havoc from major storms in the past, said Soloali'i Fa'aleopo, director of the governor's Honolulu office, who is a chief in American Samoa.

"But nothing's compared to the magnitude of this."

It was a hectic and somber day at the governor's Honolulu office, where the phones rang constantly from many of Hawai'i's nearly 40,000 Samoan population, desperate for accurate information.

Lila Livingston, the administrative assistant for the office, said none of the dozens of Hawai'i-based Samoan callers expressed concern that a similar tsunami could hit the Islands yesterday morning.

"Everyone is just worried about their families back in Samoa," Livingston said.

Livingston had to calmly urge each caller to remain patient until more information came in, even as hours passed before she heard any word about her own family back home.

Finally, Livingston's younger brother, the Rev. Faigata Manase, got a cell phone call through to her to report that their family members had made it to higher ground and were all safe.

"I was upset and scared," Livingston said. "Then it was a big relief."

Tulafono's head of security, Capt. Vanu Fano, was talking on a cell phone yesterday morning to his wife, Faga'alu, in American Samoa, as she drove their children to school.

Faga'alu suddenly started screaming that their 2007 Toyota Tundra truck was shaking uncontrollably.

Fano told his wife that an earthquake must have hit and instructed her to drive home with their kids. She did, but was immediately back on the road, trying to get to work.

"She's a workaholic," Fano said.

Ten minutes after the quake hit, Faga'alu was hit by the first wave, knocking her truck off the road.

"She's fine," Fano said. "We were lucky."