Families at quake inquest flee fresh tremors

GRIEVING families of Christchurch earthquake victims were further traumatised when powerful aftershocks sent them fleeing from an inquest into their loved ones’ deaths.

The families, who had arrived at the coroner’s inquest seeking answers on the collapse of an office block during a deadly 6.3 magnitude quake last February, ended up reliving the horror of the disaster when the tremors hit.

A 5.2-magnitude aftershock rocked the venue at Christchurch’s Riccarton Racecourse at 1.00pm (0100GMT), creating a wall of noise as windows rattled and the ground shook. More buildings came down and there was severe disruption to electricity and water supplies, but there were no fatalities. More than 40 people were taken to hospitals with minor injuries from falling debris.

At the inquest, lawyers, relatives and media scrambled for safety, eventually regathering to continuing the inquest only for a second, more powerful jolt to strike 90 minutes later.

“They’re a terrible reminder,” said Mike Barry, whose sister was killed in February.

Coroner Gordon Matenga eventually postponed the three-day probe until further notice, saying he was concerned about the state of mind of the families. Matenga had intended to examine the destruction of the Canterbury Television (CTV) building, which collapsed in the February 22 quake claiming more than 100 lives, including at least 65 foreign students, mostly from China and Japan.

The structure’s failure accounted for more than half the 181 fatalities in New Zealand’s deadliest earthquake for 80 years, raising questions about why the country’s stringent building codes failed to prevent the carnage.

Built in the 1980s, the six-storey building housed the King’s Education language school, where foreign students were studying English. The building’s disintegration and a subsequent inferno were so destructive that forensic specialists had to use DNA testing to identify the remains of many victims.