Toll from quake continues to rise

Associated Press

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand

Some screamed from inside collapsed buildings. One woman used her mobile phone to call her children to say goodbye. Others tapped on the rubble to communicate with those on the outside.

Search teams used their bare hands, dogs, heavy cranes and earth movers today to pull 120 survivors from the rubble of a powerful earthquake in one of New Zealand’s largest cities. Officials raised the death toll to at least 75, with 300 others listed as missing.

As rescuers dug through the crumbled concrete, twisted metal and huge mounds of brick across Christchurch, officials feared that the death toll could rise further, ranking the 6.3-magnitude earthquake among the island nation’s worst in 80 years.

“There are bodies littering the streets, they are trapped in cars, crushed under rubble, and where they are clearly deceased, our focus ... has turned to the living,” police Superintendent Russell Gibson said.

Prime Minister John Key said at a news conference that 75 people were confirmed to have been killed, with 55 of them identified. He declared a state of national emergency, giving the government wider powers to take control of a rescue-and-recovery operation that was growing by the hour.

Rescuers are concentrating on at least a dozen buildings that collapsed or were badly damaged.

In one of the worst, a camera inserted into the rubble showed images of people still alive, Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said. He said 120 people were rescued from wrecked buildings, and more bodies also were recovered.

Some survivors emerged without a scratch, while others had to have a limb amputated before they could be freed.

Military units patrolled near-empty streets disfigured by the huge cracks and canyons created in Tuesday’s earthquake, the second powerful temblor to hit the city in five months. The quake toppled the spire of the city’s historic stone cathedral and flattened tall buildings.

The multistory Pyne Gould Guinness Building, housing more than 200 workers, collapsed. Rescuers, many of them office workers, dragged severely injured people out. Many had blood streaming down their faces. Screams could be heard from those still trapped inside.

The earthquake knocked out power and telephone lines and burst pipes, flooding the streets with water.

The quake even shook off a massive chunk of ice from the country’s biggest glacier some 120 miles east of Christchurch.