By ETHAN Markoff
NEW ZEALAND NEWS – Last Tuesday one of the largest cities in New Zealand and business hub, Christchurch struck by earthquake of magnitude 6.3 and shook the nation with great devastation. After one week, relief officials have declared that there were no more survivors likely to be found and the task left now was recovery. The official toll of causalities is now 161. However, officials say the final estimated toll could be raised to 240.
The city is badly damaged and authorities contemplate that it would take long time to rebuild the whole, though already power, transport and sewage systems are gradually being restored.
The Civil Defence national controller John Hamilton declared to focus on recovery than rescue with a strong heart and put aside sorrow and frustration. He said that they had to face the reality and got rid of false hope as there was no chance that anyone could have survived for this long.
There are two Israeli foreign nationals are found in the bodies and identification of dead bodies has been proceeding slowly. Two Israelis found in the debris are identified as Ofer Levy, 22, and Gabi Moshe Ingel, 23. There are number of foreign students from Japan, China, Thailand and elsewhere are found in rubble but identification are yet to be done.
There are about 90 bodies found so far were pulled from the Canterbury TV building and that helped families to identify their kin. There are three major buildings - the cathedral, the Grand Chancellor hotel and the Pyne Gould Guinness building where large numbers of bodies are believed to be trapped inside the rubble.
"They've now started taking away beams and things from the bell tower, so we are at last going to see some movement in that area," said Superintendent Russell Gibson.
A large number of areas are still out of power and sewage systems that trouble the citizens. The rescuers are also scaled back in Lyttelton, the harbour town near Christchurch in search of recovery.
The historic Timeball Station in Lyttelton has faced significant damage and authorities have put their effort to restore the structure.
Rebuilding costs are put at billions of dollars. It is believed that majority of city’s buildings are demolished.
Comments
Post a Comment
User comments posted on Asia Pacific News website are the sole views and opinions of the comment writer and are not representative of any of our staff, writer, agency, reporter or citizen journalist. We accept no liability and will not be held accountable for user comments.
We reserve the right to edit, to remove or to censor any comments.
Webmasters seeking for backlinks may contribute a guest post with two outbound links (Home page and internal page) and submit it in the below comment box, which will be shifted to blog post under suitable category by moderator.