A powerful new magnitude 5.1 aftershock rattled terrified residents of New Zealand’s earthquake-stricken city of Christchurch yesterday, as officials doubled their estimate for repairing the damage from nearly 300 aftershocks in five days.
The latest quake, just 6.4km below the Earth’s surface and centered 10km southeast of the city, was felt by residents as the strongest aftershock in Christchurch since Saturday’s magnitude 7.1 earthquake wrecked hundreds of buildings.
Nobody was reported injured by the latest temblor.
“My guts are just churning up here. When will this thing end? It is like living in a maelstrom,” Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said as workers streamed from the city’s emergency headquarters.
“We have got staff in tears ... power is out and a lot of people are very, very churned up by that,” he told the NewstalkZB radio station.
“We were restarting to think maybe, just maybe, we are over the worst of this, and now we have had this shocking event,” Parker said. “This is a hammer blow to the spirit of a lot of people.”
After his second, closer look at the quake carnage yesterday, New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he thought that rebuilding the city would cost more than the initial estimates of NZ$2 billion (US$1.4 billion), with at least 500 buildings already condemned and about 100,000 of the area’s 160,000 houses damaged.
Treasury Secretary John Whitehead said later the full bill for quake damage could reach NZ$4 billion, with the nation’s Earthquake Commission likely to pay half of that.
Initial reports from geological agency GNS Science that yesterday morning’s temblor was magnitude 6.1 were quickly corrected downward.
Tavern owner Dean Calvert said he has written off his building after the latest quake.
“I’m not going back in there. The plaster has fallen off the walls inside, you can see holes from inside to outside,” he told National Radio. “The assessor saw it yesterday and it was more or less condemned then — today’s the icing on the cake, really.”
Resident David Alexander said it was a “helluva shake” that prompted his family to dive under a table for protection.
“We’ve got more stuff down [and] we almost had the house back in order,” he said.
Civil defense director John Hamilton said the safety status of some buildings would be reassessed after yesterday’s quake, though Christchurch had suffered no “significant” new damage.
The city’s main road tunnel, closed while cracks were inspected following the aftershock, was reopened after it was deemed structurally sound, he said.
GNS Science reported that more than 280 aftershocks of magnitude 3.0 or greater have struck the region in the five days since the destructive 7.1 earthquake early on Saturday.
Earthquake experts warned that another strong aftershock, up to magnitude 6.1, could hammer the region in coming days.
Yesterday, the prime minister traveled north of the city to inspect houses in the town of Kaiapoi that had been torn from their foundations by the quake.
“It shows you how well the building code works in New Zealand as they had been picked up, ripped apart and yet the structure has survived enough that people could escape,” Key said after looking through one wrecked house.
Saturday’s powerful earthquake smashed buildings and homes, wrecked roads and disrupted the central city, though nobody was killed and only two people were seriously injured — which authorities attributed to good building codes and the quake’s early morning timing.
The city center remained cordoned off by troops yesterday, as authorities extended a state of civil emergency for another seven days. Only building owners and workers are allowed into the central city to begin clearing up the mess — with much of the center taking on the mantle of a ghost town.
SEEKING CHANGE: A hospital worker said she did not vote in previous elections, but ‘now I can see that maybe my vote can change the system and the country’ Voting closed yesterday across the Solomon Islands in the south Pacific nation’s first general election since the government switched diplomatic allegiance from Taiwan to Beijing and struck a secret security pact that has raised fears of the Chinese navy gaining a foothold in the region. The Solomon Islands’ closer relationship with China and a troubled domestic economy weighed on voters’ minds as they cast their ballots. As many as 420,000 registered voters had their say across 50 national seats. For the first time, the national vote also coincided with elections for eight of the 10 local governments. Esther Maeluma cast her vote in the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was