Rescue teams’ jackhammers and bulldozers fell silent for the first time, church bells pealed and New Zealand came to a standstill yesterday to mourn as many as 240 people killed in a devastating earthquake exactly one week earlier.
Flags were lowered to half-staff, and people gathered in groups in cities and towns across the country to bow their heads for two minutes’ silence at 12.51pm.
Christchurch, the city of 350,000 that was shattered by the temblor, simply stopped.
“I was born here, I’ve lived here all my life and I’ll die here,” said Mike Cochrane, fighting back tears. “It’s my home and it hurts so much to see it in this way.”
Cochrane had climbed out of his car at one of the city’s busiest intersections to sit under a tree on a traffic island to observe the commemoration.
Nearby, Rosie MacLean had left her realtor’s office to stand in the street for the moment, a spontaneous act matched by thousands of others who also preferred to be outside.
“I suppose this is about hope, really, to realize we’ve got a future somewhere, but that’s just hard to find at the moment,” she said. “I guess this means we’ve reached a point where we can all acknowledge it together, which is a beautiful thing.”
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key had asked the nation’s 4.5 million people to join in a show of unity for people “enduring tragedy beyond what most of us can imagine.” And they did.
At the headquarters of the rescue effort, bustling in the past week with the urgency of its mission, work paused for the first time. Key, who grew up in Christchurch, joined the ceremony there, clutching the hand of his wife, Bronagh, who was born in the city.
Police said yesterday they have pulled 155 bodies from the wreckage, and said the number of others missing and feared dead indicated a final death toll higher than previously thought.
“The figure ... of around 240 is solidifying,” Superintendent Dave Cliff told reporters.
Key said a commission of inquiry would investigate the circumstances of the quake, including a detailed look at why the two worst-hit offices, where more than 100 people died — the Canterbury Television (CTV) and Pyne Gould Guinness buildings — collapsed.
He noted that both were built before substantial changes were made to New Zealand’s building code in 1976.
The owners of the CTV building said in a statement issued by their lawyers they would cooperate fully with the inquiry.
Lawyer Ken Jones said the owners had commissioned a detailed structural engineers report after an earlier quake on Sept. 4, and that the report found superficial damage to the building from that temblor but raised no structural issues.
In one quirk amid the destruction, Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said a handwritten parchment and a sealed copper cylinder believed to be a time capsule were found hidden inside a 19th century statue of the city’s founder that toppled in the disaster.
“It seems almost providential that they have come to light now to provide the inspiration we need in this most difficult time,” he said.
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