Rubble in New Zealand yields 120 alive, 75 dead

Rescuers dig for survivors

A crushed car sits in rubble from the Christchurch Catholic Cathedral, which was heavily damaged by the strong earthquake that struck the New Zealand city Tuesday.
A crushed car sits in rubble from the Christchurch Catholic Cathedral, which was heavily damaged by the strong earthquake that struck the New Zealand city Tuesday.

— Search teams used their bare hands, dogs, heavy cranes and earth-movers today to pull 120 survivors from the rubble of a powerful earthquake in one of New Zealand’s largest cities.

Officials raised the death toll to at least 75, with 300 others listed as missing.

As rescuers across Christchurch dug through the crumbled concrete, twisted metal and huge mounds of brick, officials feared that the death toll could rise further, ranking the 6.3-magnitude earthquake among the island nation’s worst in 80 years.

“There are bodies littering the streets, they are trapped in cars, crushed under rubble, and where they are clearly deceased our focus ... has turned to the living,” Police Superintendent Russell Gibson said.

Some survivors screamed from inside collapsed buildings. One woman used her mobile phone to call her children to say goodbye. Others tapped on the rubble to communicate with those on the outside.

Prime Minister John Key said at a news conference that 75 people were confirmed to have been killed, with 55 of them identified. He declared a state of national emergency, giving the government wider powers to take control of a rescue-and-recovery operation that was growing by the hour.

“Today, all New Zealanders grieve for you, Christchurch,” Key said in Wellington as he prepared to board a plane for the wrecked city.

http://www.arkansas…">New Zealand quake

“Many people have lost their lives. Families have lost their cherished loved ones. Mates have lost their mates.”

Christchurch’s mayor, Bob Parker, told reporters: “I think we need to prepare ourselves in this city for a death toll that could be significant. It’s not going to be good news, and we need to steel ourselves to understand that.”

Rescuers are concentrating on at least a dozen buildings that collapsed or were badly damaged.

In one of the worst, a camera inserted into the rubble showed images of people still alive, Parker said.

He said 120 people were rescued from wrecked buildings and more bodies also were recovered.

Some survivors emerged without a scratch. Others had limbs amputated so they could be saved, Gibson told Television New Zealand.

Military units patrolled near-empty streets disfigured by the huge cracks and canyons created in Tuesday’s earthquake, the second powerful temblor to hit the city in five months.

The quake toppled the spire of the city’s historic stone cathedral and flattened tall buildings.

“People were covered in rubble, covered in several tons of concrete,” said Web designer Nathaniel Boehm, who was outside on his lunch break when the quake struck just before 1 p.m. He saw the eaves of buildings cascade onto the street, burying people below.

“It was horrific.”

Mall worker Tom Brittenden told of how he had helped pull victims from the rubble in the immediate aftermath of the quake.

“There was a lady outside we tried to free with a child,” Brittenden told National Radio. “A big bit of concrete or brick had fallen on her, and she was holding her child. She was gone. The baby was taken away.”

The multistory Pyne Gould Guinness Building, housing more than 200 workers, collapsed. Rescuers, many of them office workers, dragged severely injured people out. Many had blood streaming down their faces. Screams could be heard from those still trapped inside.

The earthquake knocked out power and telephone lines and burst pipes, flooding the streets.

Firefighters climbed ladders to pluck people trapped on roofs of office towers to safety. Plumes of gray smoke drifted into the air from fires burning in the rubble, and helicopters used giant buckets to drench them with water.

The quake even shook off a chunk of ice from the country’s biggest glacier some 120 miles east of Christchurch.

Christchurch’s airport reopened for domestic flights today. Military flights were being added to move tourists to other cities.

Thousands of people in the city moved into temporary shelters at schools and community halls. Others, including tourists who had abandoned their hotels, huddled in hastily pitched tents and under plastic sheeting as rain drizzled while the Red Cross tried to find them accommodation.

Parker said 300 people were listed as missing but cautioned that they did not know the number trapped in collapsed buildings.

More than 400 rescue workers were joining the search, including teams from Australia, Singapore, Taiwan, the United States and Britain.

President Barack Obama said the U.S. stood ready to deploy more assistance.

Obama offered his condolences to the people of New Zealand, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton phoned New Zealand Foreign Minister Murray McCully to express her sorrow over the tremor.

Administration officials confirmed that Americans participating in two high-level delegations to the country were unharmed.

Some trapped survivors were able to call out using their mobile phones, reaching family, officials and the media.

“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.

Voss 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.”

Steve Barclay from Urban Search and Rescue told Television New Zealand, “It’s very painstaking work. Just because someone’s tapping doesn’t mean they’re 1 meter away.”

A more powerful, 7.1-magnitude earthquake hit Christchurch, a city of 350,000, on Sept. 4 but caused no deaths.The latest one was deadlier because it was closer to where people live and work, centered 3 miles from the city, and shallower, experts said.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the quake was an aftershock from September’s temblor. A strong aftershock in December caused further damage to buildings. The city was still rebuilding from those quakes when Tuesday’s hit.

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

Tuesday’s earthquake may be the costliest natural disaster for insurers since 2008, according to estimates from JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Insured losses from the temblor may be $12 billion, Michael Huttner, an analyst at JPMorgan, said in a note to clients.

That would be the most expensive calamity since the $19.9 billion loss from Hurricane Ike, which struck the U.S. in 2008, according to the Insurance Information Institute, a New York-based trade group.

New Zealand’s currency and swap rates slid on speculation the quake damage will extend the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s rate pause and increase the risk that the economy will shrink. The central bank’s view that rebuilding from last year’s quake will help growth this year may need to be revised as construction costs increase and repair plans are redrawn.

“One of the pillars for what we thought would be strong growth in 2011 has been pushed back,” said Doug Steel, markets economist at Bank of New Zealand Ltd. in Wellington. “Clearly, reconstruction from last year’s earthquake is going to be delayed and more rebuilding will be required. The boost is more likely to come in 2012 than this year.” Information for this article was contributed by Kristen Gelineau, Joe Morgan, Steve McMorran, Ray Lilley, Sean Yoong, Jay Alabaster, Tomoko Hosaka and Bradley Klapper of The Associated Press; by Noah Buhayar, Chris Bourke, Phoebe Sedgman, Michael Heath and Tracy Withers of Bloomberg News and by Erica Berenstein and Meraiah Foley of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/23/2011

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