NZ evacuates quake-hit residents
wellington — New Zealand emergency services and defence personnel evacuated hundreds of tourists and residents from a small South Island town amid more strong aftershocks on Tuesday, a day after a powerful uake killed two people.
The 7.8-magnitude tremor struck just after midnight on Sunday, destroying farm homesteads, sending glass and masonry toppling from buildings in the capital, Wellington, and cutting road and rail links throughout the northeast of the ruggedly beautiful South Island.
As aftershocks continued to rattle the region, emergency services cordoned off streets in Wellington and evacuated several buildings due to fears one of them might collapse.
Wellington Mayor Justin Lester said the vacant building appeared to have suffered structural damage when the land it was on subsided in the quake. A fire service official said a major structural beam had “snapped like a bone”.
The town of Kaikoura, a popular base for whale-watching about 150 km northeast of Christchurch, the South Island’s main city, remained cut off by massive landslips.
Four defence force helicopters flew in to the town on Tuesday morning and two Navy vessels were heading to the area carrying supplies and to assist with the evacuation, Air Commander Darryn Webb, acting commander of New Zealand joint forces, told TVNZ.
“We’re looking to do as many flights as we can out of Kaikoura today,” he said.
Around 400 of the 1,200 tourists stranded in the town were flown out on Tuesday, including 12 people with a variety of injuries, officials said.
The Red Cross, which used defence force helicopters to bring in emergency generators, satellite communications and water bladders, said water in the town was running out.
Mark Solomon, a leader of South Island indigenous Maori Ngai Tahu tribe, which has tourism and fisheries businesses around Kaikoura, said the local marae (Maori meeting place) had received 1,000 people since Monday morning. Many slept overnight in the communal hall or in vehicles outside.
The tribe had fed them with crayfish, a delicacy for which the South Island town is famous. With no power, the tanks that hold the expensive crustaceans had stopped pumping. “It’s better to use the food than throw it in the rubbish so we sent it up to the marae to feed people,” Solomon told Reuters by phone.
China chartered four helicopters to evacuate around 40 nationals from Kaikoura, mostly elderly and children, late on Monday, said Liu Lian, an official at the Chinese Consulate in Christchurch.