CHRISTCHURCH (Reuters) - Rescue teams worked under floodlights in the early hours of Wednesday searching for scores of people trapped after an earthquake struck New Zealand's second biggest city, killing at least 65 people.
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| A man walks amongst rubble in central Christchurch February 22, 2011 |
.A strong earthquake killed at least 65 people in New Zealand's second-biggest city of Christchurch on Tuesday, with more casualties expected as rescuers worked into the night to find scores of people trapped inside collapsed buildings.
It was the second strong quake in five months to hit Christchurch, a city of almost 400,000 people. About 120 survivors had been pulled from the rubble but the death toll was expected to rise.
"We may well be witnessing New Zealand's darkest day...The death toll I have at the moment is 65 and that may rise," said Prime Minister John Key, who had flown to his home city.
Authorities said they had formally identified 32 dead but more bodies were in collapsed buildings and crushed cars.
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| Christchurch Cathedral |
"We have a temporary mortuary here at Christchurch police station and I have 38 bodies here at the moment and the streets are still littered with bodies," police shift commander Russell Gibson said on Radio New Zealand.
I know that the figure of 65 has been mentioned. I know it will be significantly higher than that."
Tuesday's 6.3 magnitude quake struck at lunchtime, when streets and shops were thronged with people and offices were still occupied. It was New Zealand's most deadly natural disaster for 80 years.
Rescuers, working through the night under floodlights, focused on two buildings, a financial services block, whose four stories fell on top of each other, and a television building which also housed an English language school.
About a dozen Japanese students at the school were believed to be missing, an official in Japan told Reuters, and Japan's public broadcaster NHK said several other students from another group in the building were also unaccounted for.
SIX SHELTERING TOGETHER
Eight people were pulled from the building and six were known to be sheltering together.
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A further 22 people were known to be trapped in the finance building of whom at least three had made contact. Some of those trapped were unhurt.
"We are getting texts and tapping sounds from the living and that's our focus at the moment," Gibson said. Mayor Bob Parker described the city, an historic tourist town, as a war zone.
A local state of emergency was declared and the city centre was cordoned off and patrolled by troops in armoured personnel carriers.
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"A significant number of people have been got out of buildings alive. Of course we also find deceased people in the rubble," Parker said, adding it was estimated a further 100 people were trapped.
It was the country's worst natural disaster since an earthquake in 1931 in the North Island city of Napier killed 256 people.
On the way into the city, a Reuters correspondent saw buckled roads, toppled buildings and pools of water. Police and the army were patrolling the streets.
Christchurch has been described as a little piece of England.
It has an iconic cathedral, now largely destroyed, and a river called the Avon. It had many historic stone buildings and is popular with English-language students and with tourists visiting the scenic South Island.
EMERGENCY SHELTERS
Emergency shelters were erected in schools and at a race course. Helicopters were used to try to douse a fire in one office building, while a crane was used to help workers trapped in another office block.
I was in the square right outside the cathedral -- the whole front has fallen down and there were people running from there. There were people inside as well," said John Gurr, a camera technician who was in the city centre when the quake hit.
Aerial TV footage of surroundings suburbs showed once-elegant homes in ruins and roads cut off by huge boulders.
There have been offers of help from the United States and Japan, while Australia is sending 148 search and rescue specialists, including sniffer dogs.
"They will be deployed straight into the city to assist the New Zealand teams," said Civil Defence head John Hamilton.
Britain's Queen Elizabeth offered her sympathy and said in a statement she was "utterly shocked" by news of the quake.
Christchurch is built on silt, sand and gravel, with a water table beneath. In a quake, the water rises, mixing with the sand and turning the ground into a swamp, swallowing up roads and cars.
Unlike last year's even stronger tremor, which struck early in the morning when streets were virtually empty, people were walking or driving when the shallow tremor struck, sending awnings and the entire facades of buildings crashing down.
The tremor was centred about 10 km (six miles) southwest of Christchurch, which had suffered widespread damage but no deaths in a 7.1 magnitude quake last September.
New Zealand lies between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates and has a average of more than 14,000 tremors a year, of which about 20 are normally above magnitude 5.0.
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