Search goes on for quake victims

Rescuers were continuing a desperate search for survivors throughout the night amid the ruins of the New Zealand city of Christchurch after a massive earthquake that killed at least 65 people.

It was the second major shock to hit the city of 350,000 in five months, although it caused far more destruction than the first.

More than 100 people were thought to still be trapped in the rubble today.

“It is just a scene of utter devastation,” Prime Minister John Key said after arrving in the city within hours of the quake. He said the death toll may rise, adding: “We may well be witnessing New Zealand’s darkest day.”

The shock hit around lunchtime on a busy working day, causing the spire of the city’s stone cathedral to fall into a central square, while multi-storey buildings collapsed in on themselves and streets were strewn with bricks and shattered concrete.

Pavements and roads were cracked and split, while thousands of dazed, screaming and crying residents wandered through the streets as sirens and car alarms blared.

Ambulance services were quickly overwhelmed, and people helped victims to private vehicles in makeshift stretchers fashioned from rugs or bits of debris.

Mayor Bob Parker declared a state of emergency and ordered people to evacuate the city centre.

He said it was impossible to say how many people were trapped in the rubble, but that it was estimated to be more than 100.

“The government is willing to throw everything it can in the rescue effort,” Deputy Prime Minister Bill English said. “Time is going to be of essence.”

Troops were deployed to help people get out and to throw up a security cordon around the area, and residents throughout the city were urged to stay home or with neighbours and conserve water and food.

The airport was closed, and Christchurch Hospital was briefly evacuated before reopening. Power and phone lines were knocked out, and pipes burst, flooding the streets with water.

Police said among the dead were people in two buses that had been crushed by falling buildings.

During hours of chaos in the city, people dug through rubble with their hands to free those trapped. Firefighters climbed extension ladders to pluck people stranded on roofs to safety.

A crane lifted a team of rescuers on a platform to one group of survivors in a high-rise. Plumes of grey smoke drifted into the air at several points around the city from fires burning in the rubble.

Mr Parker said rescue teams including sniffer dogs were fanning out across the city and would work through the night.

Relief centres were set up in schools and community halls, where food was being served to thousands of sheltering people and donated blankets were being handed out.

In at least one park people – many of them tourists who had abandoned their hotels – huddled in hastily pitched tents and under plastic sheeting.

Mr Key said eight or nine buildings had collapsed, and others were badly damaged.

One woman said she phoned her family as she lay trapped, fearing she was about to die.

“I rang my kids to say goodbye,” said Ann Voss, interviewed by TV3 from underneath her desk where she was trapped in a collapsed office building. “It was absolutely horrible. My daughter was crying and I was crying because I honestly thought that was it. You know, you want to tell them you love them don’t you?”

She said she could hear other people still alive in the building, and had called out to them and communicated by knocking on rubble.

“I’m not going to give up,” she said. “I’m going to stay awake now. They better come and get me.”

Gary Moore said he and 19 other colleagues were trapped in their 12th floor office after the stairwell collapsed in the quake.

“We watched the cathedral collapse out our window while we were holding onto the walls,” he said.

“Every aftershock sends us rushing under the desks. It’s very unnerving but we can clearly see there are other priorities out the window. There has been a lot of damage and I guess people are attending to that before they come and get us.”

The multi-storey Pyne Gould Guinness Building, housing more than 200 workers, collapsed and an unknown number of people were trapped inside. Rescuers, many of them office workers, dragged severely injured people from the rubble. Many had blood streaming down their faces. Screams could be heard from those still trapped.

The US Geological Survey said the tremor was centred three miles from the city at a relatively shallow and therefore more dangerous depth of 2.5 miles.

Two large aftershocks – one magnitude 5.6 and another 5.5 – hit the city within two hours. It was felt across a large part of the South Island, and caused damage in nearby towns.

The USGS said the latest quake was part of the “aftershock sequence” following the 7.1 magnitude earthquake on September 4 last year. That quake wrecked hundreds of buildings, inflicted an estimated 4bn New Zealand dollars (€2.2bn) in damage, but caused no deaths.

A strong aftershock in December caused further damage to buildings. The city, considered a tourist centre, was still rebuilding from those quakes when today’s shock hit.

“The critical issue with this earthquake was that the epicentre was at shallow depth under Christchurch, so many people were within 10 to 20 kilometres (6 to 12 miles) of the fault rupture,” said Gary Gibson, a seismologist at Australia’s Melbourne University.

New Zealand’s worst earthquake was one that struck in 1931 at Hawke’s Bay on the country’s North Island, which killed at least 256 people.