Sorrow In New Zealand

[Madeline]

GREYMOUTH, New Zealand -- A massive explosion deep inside a New Zealand coal mine today erased hopes of rescuing 29 miners caught underground by a similar blast five days ago. The prime minister declared it a national tragedy.

Even if any of the missing men had survived the initial explosion Friday at the Pike River Mine, police said none could have lived through the second. Both blasts were believed caused by explosive, toxic gases swirling in the tunnels dug up to 1½ miles into a mountain that had also prevented rescuers from entering the mine to search for the missing.

29 miners dead after 2nd blast at New Zealand mine | cleveland.com

How terrible. We are all so sad to hear this, Dr Grump.....

 

[HinduPatriot]

The Pakistanis were probably responsible for this mine blast. Even if they weren't, Pakistan has weapons of mass destruction.

On this basis, I contend that we should nuke Pakistan.

God Bless India and Israel in the war against muslim terrorists.

 

[Madeline]

WTF?

Troll another thread, HinduPatriot.....this is someone's actual tragedy, but t'aint sabetoge.

 

[HinduPatriot]

WTF?

Troll another thread, HinduPatriot.....this is someone's actual tragedy, but t'aint sabetoge.

This is a tragedy caused by Pakistani Terrorists.

India has every right to bomb Kashmir in revenge for New Zealand's tragedy.

We are all on the same team.

You bombed Iraq for its WMDs. We will bomb Pakistan for its mine bomb terror against New Zealand.

God bless India, USA, Israel in the war against Muslim terrorists.

 

[waltky]

Would imagine we've got rescue crews on the way...

Emergency Responders Overwhelmed By New Zealand Quake
February 22, 2011 - A massive earthquake has devastated the New Zealand city of Christchurch, toppling tall office buildings at the height of the workday and killing at least 65 people.

Fire and rescue crews said their resources were overwhelmed as they struggled to cope with large numbers of people injured and trapped in the rubble. Helicopters were used to douse some fires and a crane was called in to rescue workers from the roof of a high-rise office tower. Prime Minister John Key, who rushed to the city from the capital, Wellington, said the death toll was liable to rise. He said, "We may be witnessing New Zealand's darkest day."

The 6.3-magnitude earthquake was the second in five months for the city, which came through a 7.1-magnitude quake in September without loss of life. But seismologists said this one struck closer to the city and much closer to the surface, making it far more intense. The earlier quake also came at 5 a.m., while most residents were safe in their beds. Tuesday's temblor struck just before 1 p.m., when workers were in their offices or in the streets for lunch and children were making their way home from school.

Video footage showed several multi-story buildings that fell in on themselves or into the streets, including the iconic Christchurch Cathedral, whose stone spire collapsed into a city square. Dazed residents wandered along the broken sidewalks as ambulances raced through rubble-strewn streets with sirens blaring. The city's airport was shut down and many roads are impassible.

Mr. Key said in a television interview that crews would work through the night to find and rescue people who are trapped in the collapsed buildings. He said 350 military troops were already at work in the city and another 250 were on the way to relieve them.

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New Zealand earthquake shuts down flights out of the country
February 21, 2011 - New Zealand earthquake: Air traffic control operations for New Zealand are located in Christchurch, where the air traffic control building may have been damaged by Tuesday's earthquake. All international flights from New Zealand have been suspended.

All international flights out of New Zealand were canceled Tuesday afternoon after a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit the South Island. Auckland Airport spokesman Richard Llewellyn told the New Zealand Herald that the nation's entire airways system had been shut down shortly after the earthquake hit Christchurch, damaging downtown office buildings and trapping workers. TVNZ reports fatalities from two buses crushed by falling buildings. "For the moment planes, are landing but no planes are departing,'' Mr. Llewellyn told NZPA. "The national air traffic control center is in Christchurch, and they are checking to make sure it is all OK, and until then the airways system has been closed."

The Christchurch airport is closed until at least 7 p.m. local time, and flights due to arrive there have been diverted to Auckland and Wellington airport. Jetstar New Zealand announced that flights in and out of Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and Queenstown have been suspended for the rest of the day. Airways NZ, the state-owned enterprise that operates the nation's air traffic control system, is based in Christchurch and is reportedly trying to verify the status of its equipment. There are unconfirmed reports that the Airways building was also damaged. Since the first quake hit at 12:51 p.m. local time, the New Zealand GNS Science reports a series of nine strong aftershocks, ranging from magnitude 3.4 to 5.7.

Some of the buildings may have been weakened by a magnitude 7.1 quake that struck the Christchurch area last September. And because this quake was relatively shallow, it may have caused more damage than the higher magnitude quake in September. The New Zealand Herald quotes Roger Sutton, CEO of Orion New Zealand, a power company, that electricity is down across 80 percent of Christchurch, "This is much, much more serious than last time," says Mr. Sutton, "We have some major power assets that have been damaged by this quake." Urban search and rescue crews are moving into the city, and Australia has offered to send assistance. A Google page to help people locate family and friends has been set up here:

Google Person Finder: Christchurch Earthquake, February 2011

Source

 

[Madeline]

God yes, it's horrible.

 

[waltky]

120 bodies in just one building...

New Zealand Police: Up to 120 Bodies in Quake-Hit Building
Feb 23, 2011 - Rescuers broadened their search of collapsed buildings in New Zealand's quake-shattered city of Christchurch on Thursday, as hopes faded of finding any more survivors in the hardest-hit office blocks downtown.

Police said Thursday that up to 120 bodies may still lie trapped in one of those buildings alone, though it was impossible to know the exact numbers caught in the tangled wreckage of concrete and steel that was the Canterbury Television building. The official death toll from Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude temblor stood at 76, based on the number of bodies that have been recovered from throughout the city and brought to a special morgue, and the missing were listed at 238. "We know there are more bodies yet to be recovered and we are in the process of doing that," police Superintendent Dave Cliff told a news conference Thursday.

Still, he cautioned that the list of missing almost certainly included people who had left town without notifying family or were otherwise all right. Prime Minister John Key has declared the quake a national disaster and analysts estimate its cost at up to $12 billion. Hundreds of foreign specialists - from the U.S., Britain, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan - arrived in Christchurch to bolster local police and soldiers and allowing teams to head further afield to smaller buildings not yet checked. "Now we've got the capability of going out and doing searches in areas where there may still be people trapped that hitherto we haven't been able to address," Civil Defense Minister John Carters said.

Police superintendent Russell Gibson said that the last survivor had been pulled out at 2 p.m. Wednesday, and no one had been found trapped in the rubble since. Gibson said the operation had become one of body recovery, though he rejected suggestions that rescuers were abandoning hope of finding anyone alive. "Yes, we are still looking for survivors," he said on National Radio. "There are pockets within a number of these buildings and, provided people haven't been crushed, there is no reason to suggest we will not continue to get survivors out of there." The rescue effort had been concentrating on two office towers in downtown Christchurch that crumbled to the ground when the temblor struck shortly before 1 p.m., at the height of a busy Tuesday.

At one of them, the Canterbury Television building, police said Tuesday they had given up hope of finding any more survivors and the work going on there was recovery rather than potential rescue. Four mangled bodies were pulled from the rubble overnight Wednesday, Cliff said. He said that "between the late 60s and 120 bodies, at the upper limit," were still in the building. Those caught inside include dozens of foreign students at an English language school, and officials have said some Japanese students are among those missing. The Japanese government said 27 Japanese were missing in the quake zone.

Source

 

[kiwiman127]

I have family in Christchurch, the are safe but heart broken.
I've been to Christchurch often, I just loved that city.
My prayers go out to the Kiwis.

 

[hipeter924]

LATEST: The Christchurch quake death toll rose to 113 this morning as police urged tourists to phone home so they can determine if anyone should be struck off the missing list.
Superintendent Dave Cliff said many of those on the list of 228 missing were tourists whose families were worried about their welfare.
"Please phone home, let your loved ones know where you are," he said.
Cliff said the number of dead had risen to 113 as the process of victim identification continued.
Rescue workers have begun the grim task of removing bodies from the ChristChurch Cathedral as hopes of finding any more earthquake survivors fade.
Up to 22 people are believed to have been buried in the rubble of the cathedral after the spire toppled in Tuesday's 6.3 magnitude quake.

Email your quake photos and stories to newstips@stuff.co.nz

There is little chance of finding survivors at the flattened Pyne Gould Corporation building, where bodies were pulled from the rubble overnight.
The top two floors of the Canterbury TV building, where up to 122 people are unaccounted for, have been removed, Urban Search and Rescue spokesman Mitchell Brown said.
Inspector Mark Harrison said police had established a large liaison team to begin contacting families with missing relatives.
He said daily briefings are being held for the families with several hundred people attended yesterday's meeting.
He said some people had been reported as missing many times - up to 20 on one occasion - so it took time to work through the list.
About 600 search and rescue staff, who failed to find any survivors overnight, have been working in shifts searching the central city rubble today.

The Fire Service's Paul Baxter said about 600 Urban Search and Rescue personnel were on the ground from NZ, Queensland, NSW, Japan, UK, Taiwan and Singapore.
Preservation of life was still the first priority, he said.
Mayor Bob Parker said engineers were assessing local shopping centres and malls. The focus was on medical centres and pharmacies.
Parker said 80 teams of four people were checking properties and the welfare of the people living in them.
"We are doing everything we can to rescue people - our assumption is we will be finding people alive, we don't know if that's true but that's the process we are working to."
Civil Defence Director John Hamilton reiterated this morning there was no need for people to stockpile or "risky steps" to store petrol.
"Christchurch will not run out of petrol, or fuel. Same with food," he said.
Operational supermarkets had plenty of food with good links to supplies.
The weather had changed today with rain, not expected to ease until this afternoon, making conditions dangerous for rescue workers, one of whom had been hit by falling debris this morning.
[...]
LITTLE CHANCE OF FINDING SURVIVORS
Ninety international students and staff from private training school King's Education are believed to be inside the flattened CTV building.
Australian and Japanese searchers are continuing to work at the site.
A number of Chinese nationals are believed to have been in class when the building was flattened, China Central Television reported on its website.
Some of those students have not responded to frantic calls or text messages sent by their relatives, CCTV said, adding police believed some of the students may have been sent to hospital.
While police had previously said there was no chance of survivors at the building, Police Superintendent Russell Gibson told Radio New Zealand Gibson they had not lost hope.
He said they were experienced searchers and had dealt with similar buildings in other quakes and survivors had been found.

Earthquake death toll reaches 113 | Stuff.co.nz

It's quite sad already (even worse that the death toll keeps rising), but I hope they can find some more people alive in the rubble today.

 

[waltky]

Too much shakin' goin' on...

Difficult future for Christchurch as population flees
Mon, Mar 07, 2011 - After a deadly earthquake left homes creaking and wiped out buildings and jobs, thousands of residents have turned their back on Christchurch, raising questions over the city’s future.

City officials estimate one-sixth of Christchurch’s population of 390,000 — about 65,000 people — have fled New Zealand’s second city, terrified by incessant aftershocks or because their workplace has been affected. The key question is how many of those departures will prove to be permanent. “I’m leaving,” said resident Tyra Yeabsley, who was in the worst-hit CTV building a day before the Feb. 22 tremor razed it to the ground, killing dozens. “I was always intending to, but this has just made that resolve to move all the more strong.”

The shallow, 6.3-magnitude quake devastated the South Island’s bustling tourist gateway, reducing two major office buildings to rubble, leaving a large hotel tilting and causing parts of the iconic Christchurch Cathedral to crumble. Estimates are that the tremor — that killed at least 166 people — destroyed one-third of the buildings in central Christchurch and left 10,000 people homeless. Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker has warned it could be months before parts of the city reopen, and though the government has underwritten all employees’ wages for six weeks in a bid to protect jobs, prospects for the central business district’s 52,000 workers are uncertain.

“I know already that populations in other towns in the South Island have risen exponentially as people from here who have the ability to or have a holiday home or have a contact relocate,” Parker said. “They need to make arrangements for their children’s education, they need some sort of permanence.” Hundreds of University of Canterbury students are being shipped to Australia to finish their studies, while thousands of schoolchildren have enrolled elsewhere, some as far away as Auckland, after some local schools warned they could be closed for a year.

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Earthquake Aftermath: New Zealand's Economic Growth to Fall by Half
Mar 6, 2011 | Police cordons around the most devastated section of New Zealand's earthquake-struck city of Christchurch were relaxed Sunday, allowing businesspeople and residents to salvage their valuables nearly two weeks after a temblor that killed at least 166 people.

Meanwhile, the government forecast that last month's quake, combined with a larger but less destructive one that hit the Christchurch region in September, will almost halve New Zealand's economic growth this year. Long lines formed as people waited for a cordon that had been thrown around the devastated central business district of the country's second-largest city following the Feb. 22 quake to be temporarily opened Sunday morning.

Mechanic Rick Crosbie said he was relieved that he would soon be able to visit his garage, but was also scared of what he might find. "I don't know what's going to happen until I get in there and see what the building is like," he said as he waited for a roadblock to be lifted. "I'm worried about getting customers' cars."

The government's Treasury on Sunday released an estimate that February's magnitude 6.3 quake, combined with September's magnitude 7.1 temblor, would cost around 15 billion New Zealand dollars ($11 billion). That figure is less than Prime Minister John Key's earlier estimate of NZ$20 billion ($15 billion). The Treasury also expects the disasters to slow economic growth by 1.5 percentage points, to 2 percent, for the calendar year, before the economy gathers pace again in 2012 on the strength of reconstruction work.

The disasters could sink New Zealand into a technical recession, which is defined as consecutive quarters of economic contraction. Downtown Christchurch has been divided into four green zones, where restricted access will be allowed progressively in the coming days, and a red zone, where bodies are being excavated. The red zone remains closed to the public.

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