Authorities said as many as 120 people may be buried inside one building alone.
On Thursday, nearly 1,000 rescue workers from half a dozen countries began a third day of sifting through the rubble in the city center for signs of life. While they pulled several people to safety on Wednesday, they admitted that each passing hour meant less chance of success. Many collapsed buildings are now determined to be “unsurvivable.” Body bags have become a familiar sight.
New Zealand Prime Minister John Key declared the quake a national disaster, and analysts estimated its cost at up to $12 billion.
For yet another day, Christchurch remained a city of immense danger and mounting death. Police have so far arrested a handful of looters and instituted a curfew in the downtown area as tourists scrambled to leave the city, many having lost their luggage and passports amid the destruction.
For Trusttun and other survivors, the damage is physical and emotional. How do you forgive a hometown that, like a once-trusted but now-abusive parent, has pummeled you about the head?
For two days now, Trusttun’s family of six has huddled inside a tiny shed near their demolished home, without electricity or running water. One of her two children is sick, and she heard a rumor that a local pharmacy would open in the morning.
So she sat and waited, enduring one of the 24 aftershocks that hit the city between midnight and noon Thursday alone, shaded by a billboard encouraging Christchurch residents to keep their stiff Kiwi upper lip after the quake in September: “Rebuild, brick by brick,” it said.
“You just get so tired,” Trusstun said. “Just when you get the feeling that all this uncertainty was coming to an end, another quake comes. Will it ever stop?”
On Thursday, a cozy downtown area normally bustling with pedestrians and trolley cars presented a snapshot of disaster, scenes left untouched since the earthquake struck during Tuesday’s lunch hour. A commercial drag on central Colombo Street had an end-of-the-world feel. Deathly quiet, with only the sound of a search-and-rescue helicopter overhead, time stood still here.
At a shop called Pretty Things, mannequins lay across window sills amid shattered glass, resembling shooting victims. Nearby, a pair of black men’s dress shoes sat deserted in front of a chair, as if their wearer had run off in panic. All along the street were bricks, the leftovers of building facades that had toppled onto cars, exposing the insides of rooms like life-sized doll houses. The large Cafe Valentine marquee had broken in two; one half rested against the street at a crooked angle.
At Johnson’s grocery store, the toppled stock was waist-deep, much of it spilling outside: A jar of Really Good peanut butter. A box of Nestle’s Coco Shredders cereal. Blocks away, the 27-floor Hotel Grand Chancellor, the city’s tallest building, imitated the Tower of Pisa as it listed to one side, with authorities fearing it could collapse.
Handyman Bill Straight wandered the street looking for his lost tools, jumping over three-foot fissures in the tarmac. He had been sweeping a shop floor when the quake occurred, the force throwing him on his back. Now he stood outside one house that listed to one side like it was throwing a hip check.
“Look at that place,” said Straight, wearing a sweat-stained bush hat, his white beard in the shape of a locomotive cow-catcher. “It’ll be years. This town won’t be the same now, will it?”
Early Thursday, rescue crews on the day shift prepared to hit the streets. While some concentrated on collapsed buildings, others fanned out over the city, going door to door.
“People are still shocked; they’re coming to the door in tears, but they’re glad to see us, especially the older ones,” said rescue worker Andrew Jolliffe.
Officials described Wednesday’s rescue of resident Ann Bodkin from the collapsed Pyne Gould Guinness building, which listed like the Titanic ready to slide into the deep.
Using high-tech listening devices, rescuers heard the woman’s tapping on a slab of concrete. Hours later, they had identified her location and slowly inched her out of the rubble aboard a stretcher, just as the sun broke through the rain clouds.
“They got Ann out of the building, and God turned on the lights,” Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said.
On Thursday, paramedic team leader Murray Traynor said such rescues renew their efforts. “For rescuers, and for this entire city, events like that are incredibly important,” he said. “They raise morale and give us hope that there are others there as well.”
But officials know there are limits to the human spirit and the will to survive. Traynor said 100 hours is the probably the longest time a trapped person can survive, given enough air and lack of injury.
“The clock is ticking,” he said. “We know that.”
On Wednesday, two teenaged children of a local television newscaster waited for word outside the collapsed seven-story Canterbury Television building where their mother, TV presenter Donna Manning, worked, and where officials fear 120 people may still be under the rubble.
“My mum is superwoman, she’d do anything,” one teen told reporters, tears streaming down her face.
Just then, a police officer approached and knelt before the family in the rain. “I have some horrible news…” the officer began.
There was no hope of any survivors, he explained. The teens crumpled in grief.
While many dead remain unaccounted for, the living try to regain their hold on life. Carlis Ioannis, a 66-year-old Greek immigrant, swept the shattered pottery in his front walkway, fighting back tears. The quake had broken a lifetime collection of rare pottery from Greece and elsewhere and made his small apartment unlivable.
He showed a visitor toppled masonry and scattered shards of pottery that litter his former home. Divorced, the former Greek language teacher says he has no one to look after him.
He asked a visitor for tips on city shelters. He went back to sweeping but, at the last moment, look up and uttered a phrase common to many residents of this quake-struck city.
“Please,” he said. “Don’t forget about me.”