Christchurch quake death toll to exceed 200

GRIEVING New Zealanders mourned Christchurch earthquake victims yesterday as police said the disaster’s final death toll was set to exceed 200.

The number of confirmed fatalities from last Tuesday’s 6.3-magnitude quake reached 147, but police fear more than 50 still listed as “unaccounted for” lie dead in the rubble of New Zealand’s second largest city.

Asked if he expected a final toll of 200, district commander Dave Cliff relied: “Yes, and probably a little higher than that ultimately.”

Previously police had said that more than 200 people were missing, but clarified that that figure had included the fatalities confirmed so far.

Cliff said search and rescue teams continued the grim task of scouring the wreckage in the stricken city, where no one has been found alive since a woman was pulled from a collapsed office building on Wednesday afternoon.

Office blocks folded like packs of cards in the violent tremor, which toppled entire shop frontages, tore up roads and opened huge fissures in the ground, leaving one third of the downtown area facing demolition.

Police said they still held out hope of a miracle survival in the disaster zone but, with many ruins teetering on the brink of collapse, even the task of recovering bodies had become a frustrating and perilous exercise.

“I know that they (rescuers) can see bodies that they’re trying to get out, it’s tragic,” police superintendent Russell Gibson told Radio New Zealand.

Many of the dead are believed to be in the Canterbury Television (CTV) building, which was engulfed by flames after tumbling down.

It housed an English language school attended by scores of mainly Asian students, prompting New Zealand to assure Japan and China it would investigate why stringent building standards failed to prevent the catastrophic collapse.

“Those questions will be asked and asked vigorously, I’m sure,” Tertiary Education Minister Stephen Joyce told reporters after meeting Japan and China’s ambassadors.

Students from the Philippines, Thailand and South Korea are also among those feared dead at the CTV site.

Cliff said some charred remains recovered from the building may never be identified, even with DNA technology.

“Where there is intense fire, like there was at the CTV site, it presents real difficulties... we need to brace ourselves that that possibility does exist,” he said.

Around the city, which has suffered two major earthquakes in six months, shell-shocked residents gathered at services to remember the dead.

Many were held outdoors because the quake destroyed a large number of churches.