男女羞羞视频在线观看,国产精品黄色免费,麻豆91在线视频,美女被羞羞免费软件下载,国产的一级片,亚洲熟色妇,天天操夜夜摸,一区二区三区在线电影

Asia-Pacific

New Zealand PM says quake kills at least 65

(Agencies)
Updated: 2011-02-22 08:58
Large Medium Small

New Zealand PM says quake kills at least 65

A general view shows rubble from collapsed buildings after an earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, in this Feb 22, 2011 image taken from video footage. A strong quake hit New Zealand's second-biggest city of Christchurch on Tuesday for the second time in five months, toppling buildings, causing "multiple fatalities", trapping people beneath rubble and sparking fires.[Photo/Agencies] 

New Zealand PM says quake kills at least 65

Rubble from a damaged building after an earthquake is seen in Christchurch Feb 22, 2011. [Photo/Agencies]

WELLINGTON - A strong earthquake killed at least 65 people in New Zealand's second-biggest city of Christchurch with more casualties expected as desperate rescuers picked through rubble to find people trapped in toppled buildings.

It was the second quake to hit the city in five months.

"We may well be witnessing New Zealand's darkest day...The death toll I have at the moment is 65 and that may rise," New Zealand Prime Minister John Key told local TV.

The 6.3 magnitude quake struck at lunchtime, when the streets and shops were thronged with people and the offices were still occupied.

Christchurch's mayor described the city of almost 400,000 people as a war zone.

"There will be deaths, there will be a lot of injuries, there will be a lot of heart break in this city," Mayor Bob Parker told Australian TV by phone.

The mayor said on Tuesday that as many as 200 people could still be trapped inside buildings wrecked by a strong earthquake.

Radio New Zealand quoted the mayor, Bob Parker, as saying the number trapped could be between 150 and 200.

Helicopters dumped giant buckets of water to try to douse a fire in one tall office building. A crane helped rescue workers trapped in another office block.

 New Zealand PM says quake kills at least 65

A woman is pulled from the rubble after an earthquake in Christchurch Feb 22, 2011. [Photo/Agencies]

"I was in the square right outside the cathedral -- the whole front has fallen down and there were people running from there. There were people inside as well," said John Gurr, a camera technician who was in the city centre when the quake hit.

Authorities ordered major hospitals up and down the country to make room for quake victims. There were reports of a shortage of ambulances.

"A lady grabbed hold of me to stop falling over...We just got blown apart. Colombo Street, the main street, is just a mess...There's lots of water everywhere, pouring out of the ground," Gurr said.

Emergency crews picked through the rubble, including a multi-storey office building whose floors appeared to have pancaked on top of each other.

SILT, SAND AND GRAVEL

Christchurch is built on silt, sand and gravel, with a water table beneath. In an earthquake, the water rises, mixing with the sand and turning the ground into a swamp and swallowing up sections of road and entire cars.

TV footage showed sections of road that had collapsed into a milky, sand-coloured lake right beneath the surface. One witness described the footpaths as like "walking on sand".

Unlike last year's even stronger tremor, which struck early in the morning when streets were virtually empty, people were walking or driving along streets when the shallow tremor struck, sending awnings and the entire faces of buildings crashing down.

Police said debris had rained down on two buses, crushing them, but there was no word whether anyone had been killed or injured.

The quake hit at 12:51 pm (2351 GMT Monday) at a depth of only 4 km (2.5 miles), according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

"It's huge, it's just huge," a priest told a TV reporter outside the remains of the city's stone cathedral, part of which had been reduced to a pile of large sandstone blocks.

"I just don't know whether there are people under this rubble," he said, before he appeared to add in a quiet voice: "I think so."

TALK OF POST-QUAKE RATE CUT

The quake helped knock the New Zealand dollar down to $0.75 , about 1.8 percent off late U.S. levels, on fears the damage could dent confidence in the already fragile economy.

Westpac Bank also raised the possibility that the central bank could cut interest rates over the next few weeks to shore up confidence after the quake, while other banks pushed out their expectations for the next rate hike. ANZ now expects the central bank to be on hold until the first quarter of 2012.

Shares in Australian banks and insurers, which typically have large operations in New Zealand, fell after the quake. But credit rating agency Fitch said the tremor would not itself trigger a downgrade of New Zealand sovereign rating.

The tremor was centred about 10 km (six miles) southwest of Christchurch, which had suffered widespread damage during last September's 7.1 magnitude quake but no deaths.

James Goff, of the University of New South Wales' Natural Hazards Research Laboratory in Australia, said some buildings that survived last year's quake had been weakened and unable to withstand the second one, especially such a shallow tremor.

"A lot of the infrastructure has still not fully recovered from the last earthquake so that would have still been feeling weak and susceptible to another big earthquake," he said.

The region has been struck by thousands of aftershocks since the original quake.

New Zealand, which sits between the Pacific and Indo-Australian tectonic plates, records on average more than 14,000 earthquakes a year, of which about 20 would normally top magnitude 5.0.

   Previous Page 1 2 3 4 Next Page  

分享按鈕
主站蜘蛛池模板: 禹城市| 龙泉市| 达日县| 上饶市| 安化县| 勐海县| 拜城县| 白朗县| 乌苏市| 广德县| 濮阳县| 梁平县| 元朗区| 平邑县| 慈利县| 法库县| 吴堡县| 兰州市| 北票市| 灌阳县| 晋州市| 信阳市| 宿松县| 林芝县| 平舆县| 鹤壁市| 磴口县| 东港市| 会昌县| 资源县| 江西省| 涿鹿县| 东兴市| 彭泽县| 阳曲县| 新昌县| 浦县| 南江县| 黄石市| 张家口市| 安陆市| 淳化县| 饶河县| 汝阳县| 育儿| 札达县| 万州区| 哈密市| 鄂温| 顺平县| 尼勒克县| 南投县| 盐源县| 自治县| 称多县| 灌南县| 岑巩县| 丽水市| 巫溪县| 陕西省| 鲁山县| 涡阳县| 方城县| 石首市| 鲁山县| 延寿县| 都匀市| 鹰潭市| 盖州市| 白沙| 甘德县| 重庆市| 巴彦县| 丹棱县| 霍邱县| 玛曲县| 自治县| 高雄市| 巴林左旗| 东方市| 新安县| 蓝山县|