VANIMO, Papua New Guinea (Reuters) - One minute Blandien Sapien was cooking under her hut with her two babies. The next she was high up in a coconut tree clinging to her one-week-old daughter, after her other girl was washed away. Such was the force of three tsunamis which struck her village of Arop on Papua New Guinea‘s northwest coast on Friday. Thousands of people are still missing and the official death toll stands at 1,600 after the waves thundered out of the night onto several villages on the coast around Sissano lagoon. Sapien‘s one-year-old daughter Kathy was one of those swept away by the torrent. Hundreds of children too weak to fight the walls of water are dead — a „lost generation“. When the water receded Sapien clambered down the coconut tree and floated away on a pandanus branch clinging to her surviving infant. Another person floated by and took the baby away from its weakening mother. Sapien swam ashore and made her way to the remains of a school where she was reunited with her then unnamed daughter. On Wednesday at Pou village, about two hours‘ walk inland from Arop, Sapien was being comforted by Australian Catholic nun Sister Maria Mooney. But Mooney said she felt a deep sense of both sadness and of hope. Mooney firmly believes good things could still come from the disaster here. „Unity, understanding and care for each other and our faith will be enriched,“ she said. That faith was very much alive in James Amoro, who lost all five of his children aged between five and 12 to the giant waves, one estimated at 10 metres. Amoro‘s wife is in the hands of the Australian military medics at the Vanimo field hospital. The most immediate concern in the villages close to the disaster site is to find survivors, especially children. Already dozens of dazed youngsters have appeared out of the bush after their wild surf ride across Sissano lagoon. Back in Pou village, Sapien cares for her baby daughter with the help of her extended family or „wantoks“. Her infant daughter didn‘t have a name before the tidal waves. Now she is called Kathy, the name of the big sister she barely knew who was washed away in the night.