7.4 QUAKE ROCKS CHRISTCHURCH | Bay of Plenty News | Local News in Bay of Plenty

It struck in the wee small hours, a rumbling roar and intense swaying that lasted for the best part of a minute.

Christchurch was a city paralysed today after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake hit the city at 4.35am. Historic buildings came crashing down, power was severed and minor injuries were reported.

The quake was centred 30km west of Christchurch and 33km underground.

Caught up in the drama was the Bay of Plenty rugby team, who last night lost 28-9 to Canterbury. Their central city hotel was evacuated, though all players and management were uninjured.

"I was in the Gisborne earthquake a couple of years ago and this was much worse than that," technical advisEr Paul Feeney said, while players huddled under blankets in the hotel foyer.

"I was staying with my partner and mum in another hotel but as soon as it happened, we came back to the team hotel to be around people we knew," reserve hooker Simon Chisholm said. "Now we're just pretty keen to get home."

That could take some time. Airport staff spent the morning turning people away, with the control tower and terminal reportedly suffering damage.

An airport spokesman said they are waiting for daylight to assess possible damage. They expect to reopen by 10am.

Tauranga Boys' College under-15 rugby team also found themselves in the midst of the disaster, struggling to hold on to door frames as the force of the earthquake threw them around the fifth floor of a hostel.

Coach Barry Ririnui said the group was staying at the YMCA hostel in the central city when they quake hit.

"We got caught right up in the middle of everything," he said.

As they struggled to hold on to door frames, Mr Ririnui said the main concern was for the 24 boys in their care.

"TVs were falling off the shelves. We couldn't hold on to the doorframes, it just kept throwing us around. At 4.30 this morning we were standing in a park, no shoes.

"People were running round, freaking out. Within half an hour we went back in to get out bags and water was coming out of the walls."

The parents took the boys to a shopping mall in Hornby, away from the tall buildings in the central city.

As he spoke to the Bay of Plenty Times, Mr Ririnui said the McDonald's Restaurant, where there was about an hour-long wait for breakfast, was shaking with an aftershock.

"The whole McDonald's door was shaking , I mean shaking," he said.

The team was due to fly out of Christchurch at 9.30am today but were turned away. Mr Ririnui said they would look into finding a motel to book into.

In Cashell St, team manager and coach Cliff Honey and his son were trying to get to the rental car depot to pick up the car they had booked to drive and stay with friends near Timaru. When they arrived the block where the depot was had been cordoned-off.

He said doors on clothing and shoe stores were wide open, windows smashed and alarms sounding.

He saw a taxi and a BMW car both crushed by falling debris.

Mr Honey said police were trying to keep people away from buildings and prevent looting in the insecure stores.

"It's quite a major down here. It's like being in a movie."

The team was in Christchurch for the national under-15 tournament, in which they made the semifinals.

The same rugby team found themselves stranded at a marae, just north of Opotiki on August 14.

The team was on its way home from playing Gisborne Boys' High School when slips and heavy flooding closed State Highways 2 and 35 out of Opotiki.

The team spent the night at the marae and knocked on the doors of fish and chip shops to find a meal.

"We've had a flood and an earthquake all in the same year," Mr Ririnui said.

Outside with the dawn, as aftershocks continued, the damage soon became evident. While most modern buildings survived intact, many heritage buildings in the city centre lost chimneys or their entire frontages.

The suburb of Avonside suffered extensive damage, with streets closed and piles of rubble scattered over footpaths.

Water pipes burst, the wail of car alarms and sirens filling the void of a city immobilised and shut down.

The first reports of looting came within half an hour of the first shock. A block from the Steamers hotel, a ute pulled up to a liquor store and smashed their way in. Witnesses say they grabbed several boxes of beer and took off.

Police arrived quickly, responding to several similar calls, while worried shop owners huddled in doorways with torches to prevent further attacks.

 

 

 Police said there have been reports of minor injuries, power to Christchurch was out, sewer lines had been damaged and there had been considerable damage to at least 20 roads, with some impassable, including Sumner Rd.

Structural damage to houses, gas coming out of certain places and broken glass was being reported from throughout Christchurch, while damage and power outages had been reported from as far away as Dunedin.

Civil Defence and Emergency Management director John Hamilton said the National Crisis Management Centre has been activated to monitor the situation and co-ordinate central government response if required.

A Timaru resident said he was awakened by the shaking. His house was groaning and a bedside lamp crashed off its table.

A man who lives in the southern Christchurch coastal suburb of Southshore described the quake as "incredibly long and tortuous".

He was on the second floor of his house and could feel the house "twisting and fracturing around our ears", and it had been left "on a bit of an angle".

There were cracks and a chasm across his garden.

Photographer David Alexander, of suburban Opawa, said the aftershocks "just keep coming". His house still had power but street lights were out.

Mr Alexander said his wife was from Japan and had experienced worse shocks but she said this was a pretty good one.

Their 103-year-old villa had withstood the onslaught well but there was broken glass and china everywhere, and "a very frightened cat under the bed".

Christchurch man Chris Hutching said the water mains had burst in his St Albans neighbourhood and that "chimneys are down all around us".

Another man said the top of St Joseph's church, in Papanui, appeared to have fallen off.

All Christchurch Hospitals are operational, though people are asked to only come into hospital if it is an emergency.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre said no destructive widespread tsunami threat existed based on historical earthquake and tsunami data. However, earthquakes of this size sometimes generated local tsunamis that could be destructive along coasts located within 100km of the earthquake epicentre, it said.

Civil Defence asked people to assess their home or workplace for damage; look for and extinguish small fires if safe to do so; and not overflow the phone lines with non-emergency calls. They were also asked to check on elderly neighbours.

- with Michele McPherson and NZPA