People are silent and dazed in the aftermath of the tidal wave, according to an Irish nun in the area, writes Carol Coulter.
Sister Mairead O'Riordan, a member of the Franciscan Sisters of the Immaculate Conception, has been in the Aitape mission for two years. It is about 35 kilometres from the main site of the disaster, she said, so it was spared.
"We felt the earthquake and saw the tidal wave coming. It went past us and missed the cove we're in," she told The Irish Times. "We get reports on the radio in the mornings and the next morning they started coming in from the local missions, saying 10 or 20 people were missing.
"I've been in the hospital. Most people are in a daze; they're not crying or anything. Most have lost at least one or two family members. We had one little boy of 10 in who was the only survivor of his family.
"One of our local priests, Father Eliot, found his parents on the beach with only minor injuries. A sister from the village of Nimas, which has been wiped out, found her father alive. Her 10 brothers and sisters and her mother are all missing.
"There are still bodies in the lagoon, so there is the problem of disease. The suffering is unbelievable."
A report from the diocesan administrator for Aitape, Father Austen Crapp, said that three large villages in the diocese, Nimas, Warapu and Arop, were wiped off the face of the earth.
"Over 100 bodies are floating in the sea and lagoon," he said; "2,000 are missing, most hiding in the bush far from the sea where the survivors fled in terror of another wave. They are without good water and shelter. Only the dead and severely injured were in Arop when the medical teams arrived.
"The lagoon is full of debris from trees, houses and household goods, mixed with bodies. The mouth of the canal is choked with bodies, making canoe access impossible.
"Many children were swept out to sea but many others have lost both their parents. The nursing sisters keep finding children in the hospital with severe wounds and suffering from extreme shock who have no person left in their family."
Helicopters are ferrying the wounded to the mission hospital at Aitape, and the more serious cases are being transferred to provincial hospitals.
The mission hospital medical staff, who have been on duty continuously since Saturday morning, are extremely fatigued, according to Father Crapp. Nurses from other dioceses are en route to relieve them.
"The bodies are now decomposing and this is developing into a further health hazard for already devastated people," he said. "The task of rebuilding their lives with the remainder of their families in a shattered environment is a tremendous burden for which they will need all the strength and spiritual resources they can dredge up from the depths of their souls."