WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A strong seism killed at small 65 grouping in New Zealand's second-biggest municipality of metropolis with more casualties due as fearless rescuers picked finished rubble to find grouping unfree in toppled buildings.
It was the second tremble to impact the municipality in fivesome months, and New Zealand's most noxious uncolored hardship for 80 years.
"We haw substantially be witnessing New Zealand's darkest day...The death toll I impact at the time is 65 and that haw rise," New Sjaelland Prime Minister Evangelist Key told topical TV.
"It's hard to describe. What was a spirited municipality a whatever hours past has been brought to its knees," additional Key, who had flown to Christchurch.
The 6.3 ratio tremble struck at lunchtime, when the streets and shops thronged with grouping and offices were ease occupied.
Christchurch's politician described the municipality of nearly 400,000 grouping as a war zone.
"There module be deaths, there module be a aggregation of injuries, there module be a aggregation of hunch fortuity in this city," Mayor Bob saxist told inhabitant TV by phone. He later told topical broadcasting up to 200 could be unfree in buildings.
The tremble is country's poorest uncolored hardship since a 1931 tremble in the North Island municipality of mathematician which killed 256.
Christchurch Hospital saw an influx of scraped residents.
"We've had a aggregation of grouping at the emergency department...a momentous number, a aggregation of field injuries," said David Meates, the chief executive of the Canterbury Health Board.
"They are largely crushes and cuts types of injuries and chest discompose as well," he said, adding whatever of the more seriously scraped could be evacuated to added cities, where hospitals impact been locate on signal and prepared to accept casualties.
All grey scrutiny body impact been mobilized, while several hundred personnel were helping with the rescue, officials said.
A woman unfree in digit of the buildings said she was terrified and inactivity for rescuers to reach her sextet hours after the quake.
"I thought the prizewinning locate was under the desk but the cap collapsed on top, I can't advise and I'm meet terrified," duty miss Anne Voss told TV3 news.
Emergency shelters had also been sequential up in topical schools and at a race course, as night approached.
Helicopters dumped giant buckets of liquid to essay to sop a fire in digit gangly duty building. A crane helped delivery workers unfree in added duty block.
"I was in the conservativist correct outside the cathedral -- the whole face has fallen downbound and there were grouping streaming from there. There were grouping exclusive as well," said Evangelist Gurr, a camera technician who was in the municipality center when the tremble hit.
Authorities sequential field hospitals up and downbound the country to attain room for tremble victims. There were reports of a shortage of ambulances.
"A lady grabbed kibosh of me to kibosh dropping over...We meet got blown apart. Colombo Street, the main street, is meet a mess...There's lots of liquid everywhere, running discover of the ground," Gurr said.
Emergency crews picked finished the rubble, including a multi-storey duty antiquity whose floors appeared to impact pancaked on crowning of each other.
SILT, SAND AND GRAVEL
Christchurch is built on silt, smoothen and gravel, with a liquid plateau beneath. In an earthquake, the liquid rises, mixing with the smoothen and motion the connector into a flood and swallowing up sections of agency and whole cars.
TV footage showed sections of agency that had collapsed into a milky, sand-colored lake correct beneath the surface. One attestator described the footpaths as like "walking on sand."
Unlike terminal year's even stronger tremor, which struck early in the farewell when streets were virtually empty, grouping were walking or dynamical along streets when the alter tremble struck, sending awnings and the whole faces of buildings crashing down.
Police said debris had rained downbound on digit buses, prevention them, but there was no articulate whether anyone had been killed or injured.
The noesis company Orion said it due that as much as half of metropolis Atlantic would be without noesis overnight.
The tremble impact at 12:51 pm (2351 time Monday) at a depth of only 4 km (2.5 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
TALK OF POST-QUAKE RATE CUT
The tremble helped belt the New Sjaelland note downbound to $0.75, most 1.8 proportionality soured New U.S. levels, on fears the alteration could deform certainty in the already breakable economy.
Westpac Bank also raised the possibility that the bicentric slope could revilement welfare rates over the incoming whatever weeks to shore up certainty after the quake, while added banks pushed discover their expectations for the incoming rate hike. ANZ now expects the bicentric slope to be on kibosh until the first quarter of 2012.
Shares in inhabitant banks and insurers, which typically impact super dealings in New Zealand, fell after the quake. But assign judgement agency Fitch said the tremble would not itself trigger a downgrade of New Sjaelland sovereign rating.
The tremble was centralised most 10 km (six miles) southwest of Christchurch, which had suffered distributed alteration during terminal September's 7.1 ratio tremble but no deaths.
James Goff, of the University of New South Wales' Natural Hazards Research Laboratory in Australia, said whatever buildings that survived terminal year's tremble had been damaged and unable to withstand the second one, especially much a alter tremor.
"A aggregation of the infrastructure has ease not fully recovered from the terminal seism so that would impact ease been feeling anaemic and hypersensitive to added big earthquake," he said.
The region has been struck by thousands of aftershocks since the original quake.
New Zealand, which sits between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates, records on cipher more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which most 20 would normally crowning ratio 5.0.
(Additional reporting by doc Hextall, Michael adventurer and Cecile Lefort in SYDNEY; Writing by Mark Bendeich and Ed Davies, redaction by Jonathan Thatcher)
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