Evacuations amid New Zealand aftershocks
RESCUERS in New Zealand yesterday began airlifting relieved tourists stranded by a 7.8 earthquake that devastated parts of the South Island coast and sparked up to 100,000 landslides.
Military helicopters started ferrying the first of 1,200 holidaymakers trapped in the seaside town of Kaikoura, which bore the brunt of a quake that claimed two lives when it struck early on Monday.
Officials said the US and Japanese militaries would also join the relief effort.
Huge landslides cut Kaikoura’s road and rail links, and police said water was running low, power was intermittent and hundreds of people were sheltering in evacuation centres.
The town has a population of 2,000, which Prime Minister John Key said was bolstered by the tourists, mostly international backpackers attracted by the area’s popular whale-watching cruises.
Key said getting them out safely was top priority and four air force helicopters had begun transporting them to nearby Christchurch, with numerous civilian choppers also helping the airlift. The naval ship HMNZS Canterbury was steaming to the scene and will take hundreds more when it arrives, likely today.
Key estimated that the earthquake repair bill would reach into the billions of dollars but said the first job was delivering much-needed supplies to the town.
“It’s more water and food, it’s more chemical toilets, it’s fixing up the road access, getting those tourists out and then ultimately the big clean-up job,” he said.
The Defence Force said a C-103 Hercules was on standby to drop supplies, while officials accepted a US Navy offer of two MH-60 helicopters and assistance from Japan, the exact nature of which is still under discussion.
The tremor, one of the most powerful ever in the quake-prone South Pacific nation, hit just after midnight on Monday morning, with more than 1,200 aftershocks complicating relief efforts.
The quake triggered numerous landslides that dumped mountains of rocky debris on a main highway and ripped railway tracks 10 metres off course. Huge fissures opened up in roads and some houses were rocked off their foundations.
New Zealand’s official GeoNet said reconnaissance flights had noted between 80,0000 to 100,000 landslips. One person died at a historic homestead that collapsed at Kaikoura, with another killed at a remote property north of Christchurch.
Experts said that the relatively low death toll was because the quake was centred on a sparsely populated area and hit at night, when people were in their homes.