Tens of thousands of homes damaged in NZ quake

Updated September 7, 2010 08:28:38

Significant aftershocks of a magnitude more than 5 continued overnight as the state of emergency is extended in New Zealand following Saturday's powerful Christchurch earthquake.

More than 500 buildings in the Canberbury area have been destroyed and more may follow after the completion of engineers inspections. Buildings have been completely destroyed in the heart of the city, others are badly damaged, though most look to have escaped the force of the earthquake in the central business district.

Authorities have been leaving nothing to chance with the CBD remains cordononed off and is being patrolled by troops.

Presenter: Geraldine Coutts
Speaker: Philippa McDonald, reporter in New Zealand

MCDONALD: Everyone's pretty nervous here, there's been significant aftershocks throughout the night. There would have three rather large ones, probably in the fives between about 11:30 and midnight last night. So everyone's pretty jittery, those aftershocks have been constant. We've had now more than 200 of them.

As you said the city central CBD is slowly opening for business, there are barriers around all the buildings that look like collapsing or have to be demolished. There are buses coming into the city as we speak this morning, just very limited commuter services. The mayor Bob Parker says he and everyone's very committed to try to get people back to work. Kids aren't back at school yet, although apparently a couple of schools are opening today, many more will open tomorrow. But engineers had to go in and inspect each and every one of those schools and kindergartens to make sure that they're safe for kids to go back to school.

The other thing is we do have reports of two families at one of the welfare centres having gastroenteritis, apparently up to 20 people, it's not clear whether the infection is due to consuming contaminated water or whether the infection pre-dates the earthquake. But they've been isolated, health authorities here aren't taking any risks, and tests are underway in pathology trying to establish what the cause is. The medical officer for Canterbury says although the cause is not known to these two clusters, it's an important reminder that we should be boiling our water, especially any water that we drink and to be there to clean teeth, vegetables, salads and fruit. I mean it is an issue in these welfare centres, there are several of them around town. They are literally the gyms of high schools and hundreds of people are being accommodated there, and of course we've got 360 pipes that are broken throughout Canterbury. There's been sewerage in the streets, that's been cleaned up relatively quickly, but it's a very real public health issue.

COUTTS: How much longer will the state of emergency remain?

MCDONALD: At least until tomorrow Geraldine. We will have a meeting of the three Canterbury mayors and John Key this afternoon, and it looks like that state of emergency will be enforced there. There has been a little bit of an easing of the restrictions. There was not a curfew in town overnight. But look I suppose with that state of emergency the weather can be a little bit tricky here too. That might be something that they want to keep the army here for. As you mentioned there are troops in the streets, they've very visible in the streets of Christchurch, very unusual sight for the people of Christchurch to have soldiers at cordons throughout the central business district. But yes, certainly a state of emergency until at least tomorrow.

Today it's cold in Christchurch, it's wet, there is no wind, but I think that state of emergency would stay if the winds really picked up because there are so many unstable buildings. In terms of the number of homes that need repair, the estimate today is 100,000 homes need repairs. The Prime Minister said late yesterday that he reckons a lot of those will probably need to be demolished. If you go out to Kaiapoi which is only 17 kilometres from where I am and where I spent a fair bit of time the buildings have got cracks from the road right through the driveway, right through the house, and right through the backyard. And I suppose if you look at the activity you can see crevasses and deep ravines in backyards or like little silt volcanoes as the waters come up from the table.

COUTTS: Well Prime Minister John Key had a cabinet meeting yesterday and further to the 100,000 homes you've just mentioned there Philippa that have been damaged, the 2001 census says there were only 122, nearly 120,000 households in Christchurch anyway, so that means most of them have been damaged?

MCDONALD: Yes, yes, most of them have sustained some damage. Not all significant damage, but chimneys are down, repairs need to be made, they've sustained some loss of property, that kind of thing.

COUTTS: So what else came out of the cabinet meeting, did they determine how much money they could release to get the repairs underway?

MCDONALD: Yes Geraldine, it looks like the earthquake commission will have to release about a billion dollars first up in terms of trying to get those homes repaired. There's also $100 million, or $94 million that looks like being released in the coming days for infrastructure repairs, because you've got a lot of road damage, a few bridges down, not major bridges, but smaller bridges which are significant. There's had to be a lot of track work too because they've had to check the rail track. But a lot of the roads need repairs, so $100 million first up for that.