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Strong New Zealand quake aftershock continues to destroy buildings
A powerful aftershock measuring a magnitude of 5.1 hit the earthquake-stricken city of Christchurch, New Zealand today, with almost 300 aftershocks in five days raising the costs of damages in the city.
The most recent quake was six miles southeast of the city just four miles before the Earth’s surface, and was felt by residents as the strongest aftershock since the earthquake on Saturday.
Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said "We were restarting to think maybe, just maybe, we are over the worst of this, and now we have had this shocking event.” He added "This is a hammer blow to the spirit of a lot of people.”
"We have got staff in tears ... power is out and a lot of people are very, very churned up by that," he said.
At least 500 buildings have been ravaged and about 100,000 of the area’s 160,000 houses damaged.
Treasury Secretary John Whitehead said later the full bill for quake damage could reach NZ$4 billion. The nation's Earthquake Commission is likely to pay half.
Civil defence director John Hamilton said the safety status of the buildings will be reassessed after today’s quake, although no “significant” damage is said to have been caused.
GNS science reported that around 280 of the aftershocks which struck the city after Saturday’s 7.1 quake had a magnitude of 3.0 or more.
Seismologist Brian Ferris said people would have felt about 150 of those quakes. Earthquakes experts have warned that another strong aftershock of up to 6.1 could ensue in coming days.
"With an earthquake of magnitude 7.1, like this one, the rule of thumb is you could get aftershocks as large as one unit lower — so magnitude 6.1," seismologist John Townend of Victoria University in the capital, Wellington, said.
The main quake on Saturday struck at 4:35 a.m. near the South Island city of 400,000 people, ripping open a new fault line in the earth's surface. Nobody died as a result of the earthquake, and only two people were seriously injured. Power and water supplies have gradually been restored in recent days.
New Zealand sits above an area where two tectonic plates collide. The country records more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, but only about 150 are felt by residents. Fewer than 10 a year do any damage.
