LA'IE — Delsa Moe's family back in Independent Samoa yesterday hastily buried her cousin after she had been swept out to sea by Tuesday's killer tsunami, making the 2,600-mile distance between Hawai'i and home seem that much farther away.

Another of Moe's cousins, in American Samoa, also died in the killer surge.

"The morgues and hospitals are all full," Moe said. "They had to bury her so quickly, where normally they would wait until all of the family could come home and grieve and tell stories about her life."

But Moe has found comfort in being around others like herself in this corner of Windward O'ahu, where it seems that almost everyone is suffering the same feelings of loss and grief — or the frustration of not knowing whether family members survived the earthquake and tsunami.

La'ie was a former city of refuge when Mormon leaders built a temple here in 1919, providing familiar support for Samoans on O'ahu who had been raised in the Mormon faith back home, said Moe, the cultural presentations director at the Polynesian Cultural Center, which is adjacent to Brigham Young University-Hawai'i in La'ie.

Today, Moe estimates that half of all of the people in La'ie share Samoan ancestry and are connected to the Mormon faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

"I wish I could be back home," said Moe, who was born and raised in Lotopa in Independent Samoa and is now a member of the LDS 1st Ward. "So it's very comforting to know there are so many others going through what you are. We can all grieve together."

Certainly, others of Samoan ancestry across the Islands are experiencing the same feelings of distance and loss as they hear scattered reports of family deaths and see photos of the destruction left from the quake and tsunami.

Kelemete Kelemete lives in Kuhio Park Terrace and has family in the American Samoa capital of Pago Pago who were still missing.

Yesterday, he saw news photos of his village underwater, including the field he played in as a child.

"There are coffins in the roadway," he said. "Cars are hanging out of buildings. It's horrible."

Tenari Ma'afala, president of the State of Hawai'i Organization of Police Officers, the police officers' union, lost an aunt and uncle in the Pago Pago devastation.

"My family doesn't have cell phones," he said. "They had to go door to door to check on everyone."

Even in his grief, Ma'afala thought of others, including those suffering in the Philippines from last weekend's flood.

"In Samoa, we are all one family," Ma'afala said. "But our hearts also go out to the people of the Philippines."

Up in La'ie, it seems as if the entire community has been in mourning over the past three days.

"La'ie is close, very, very close," said Pulefano Galeai, a chief from the Fale Lua Chief Council, who lives near the LDS temple. "In Hawai'i, everyone of a certain age is 'uncle' or 'auntie.' But in La'ie it is like everyone is your real uncle or auntie. We're all family."

Two of Galeai's cousins died in the tsunami and a member of his extended family who lives in his house lost her mother.

BENEFIT CONCERT

Spencer Scanlan was still wet yesterday following a Samoan canoe/dance performance at the Polynesian Cultural Center's "Rainbows of Paradise Canoe Pageant" in which he ends up in the center's lagoon.

Scanlan was still wearing his performance smile when he was asked about his family back in the village of Tafuna.

"My heart is there in Samoa," he said. "I feel so helpless being here. But talking about it with so many others who are going through the same thing helps. We all migrate toward each other."

Scanlan, the 25-year-old Samoan Club president at BYU-Hawai'i, is organizing a free concert of Island entertainers Oct. 17 at the university's activity center to benefit tsunami relief. Attendees will be asked to make donations.

"At least it's something I can do," Scanlan said.

About 40 percent of the Polynesian Cultural Center's more than 1,000 employees are of Samoan descent, PCC officials said yesterday.

So coming to work each day since the tsunami has been like joining an enormous support group where everyone is struggling through the same emotions, Moe said.

And many of the younger PCC employees with families in Samoa have looked to Steve Laulu as a father figure, Moe said.

Laulu is the manager of PCC's Samoan Village attraction and is also a chief from the island of Savaii in Independent Samoa, which was hit hard by the earthquake and tsunami.

Even though he had not heard any word about his own family as of yesterday, Moe said, Laulu has been helping younger Samoan employees talk through their grief and frustrations at being so far from home.

Asked if it's hard to console others when he didn't know the fate of his own family, Laulu just shook his head.

"When something happens to one, it affects everyone," he said. "We're all family."