A POCKET of 15 people found alive trapped in a six-storey office block which collapsed in the Christchuch earthquake have been rescued, a fire official says.
Rescuers have located and recovered the group of people alive from the CTV Building destroyed by the massive Christchurch earthquake, the Fire Service said.
“We’ve got them out of the building and they’re still alive, which was the goal for us, and we’re continuing to search for more,” a fire department spokesman told national radio.
Witnesses told TVNA that rescuers clapped as the survivor was pulled out of the rubble.
The CTV building was earlier expected to be the site of the worst casualties.
The fire department spokesman said another survivor was pulled from a nearby office building which was also badly damaged in the tremor.
In some instances rescuers have had to amputate limbs to free survivors from collapsed buildings.
Describing scenes of “absolute carnage”, police this morning estimated that about 100 people remained trapped in the rubble, as rescue workers say they had to “give up” on recovering the dead and “concentrate on the live people.”
Superintendent Russell Gibson said bodies still littered the streets of New Zealand’s second city after yesterday’s 6.3-magnitude quake. The number of identitied dead stands at 75, with authorities expecting the death toll to rise significantly. Three hundred people are missing.
“There is incredible carnage right throughout the city,” Superintendent Gibson told Radio New Zealand. “There are bodies littering the streets, they are trapped in cars and crushed under rubble.”
He said the number of trapped “could be another 100, it could easily be more than that”, adding the toll would rise. “It will be significantly higher,” he said.
Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said people needed to be prepared for more heartbreak.
“We needs to harden ourselves for what we are going to hear,” he said.
Worst casualties
The worst casualties are expected to be at the site of the CTV building, which was a pile of rubble this morning.
A demolition worker helping the rescue effort said: “We were working on one side of the building and on that side we managed to pull one person alive but we also pulled out a body. On the other side they pulled out four or five – I don’t know if they were dead or alive.”
Shane Cole, a Fire Service station officer and an member of the urban search and rescue team, said rescuers had heard banging in buildings and one person had managed to send a text message this morning while trapped on the first floor of the CTV building.
He said their focus from the start had been to extract those still alive and they had been forced to work around fatalities.
“We just had to give up (on them) and concentrate on the live people.”
New Zealand Labour party leader Phil Goff said: “I was told early this morning, there were 87 people who were in that building, I think only a handful have got out.”
In the Forsyth Barr building, trapped office workers were rescued by crane after the internal stairwell collapsed.
Toiling through darkness
Superintendent Gibson said that more than 500 rescuers, including police and military personnel, pulled between 20 and 30 people from the debris overnight, toiling through the darkness.
“It’s quite amazing, we have some people we’ve pulled out and they haven’t got so much as a scratch on them, we’ve had other people where we’ve had to amputate limbs to get them out,” he said.
TV3 reported that one man in the Pyne Gould Guinness building had to have both legs amputated in order to be rescued.
Superintendent Gibson said emergency workers were going door to door through the city centre calling out to anyone who was trapped, with rescue efforts concentrating on two office buildings where survivors had managed to communicate with them.
“We are getting texts and tapping sounds from some of these buildings and that’s where the focus is at the moment,” he said.
Rescuers are concentrating their efforts on 10 buildings in Christchurch’s centre while fire crews warned that they were battling blazes with limited water supplies.
An official of the emergency department at Christchurch Hospital said they had 200 injured people up to midnight.
“People have been hit by falling bits and pieces, and crushed by masonry. Some people did not make it.”
The first of two Australian teams of 70 arrived this morning, with specialist help also expected to come from Japan, Britain and the US. Up to 1000 troops are also expected to help emergency workers.
An Australian Medical Assistance Team is also expected to deploy today.
Australia has three consular officials on the ground in Christchurch, including its deputy high commissioner, with more staff from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and Centrelink on the way.
Australian officials in Christchurch are contacting registered Australians and have confirmed the safety of over 400 Australians but are still seeking to confirm the status of another 1000 or so who are known or believed to be in the earthquake-affected area.
Prime Minister John Key said, “We may be witnessing New Zealand’s darkest day,” after the quake pummelled the city, six months after buildings were weakened by a 7.0 quake that miraculously claimed no victims.
A retired Sydney police officer, Ron Mason, described how he tried to pull two women from a collapsed fish and chip shop.
When the aftershock hit and Mr Mason found himself trapped under a pile of bricks. He was pulled from the rubble unhurt. But the two women could not be saved.
“I was sitting in the car with my work mate when the buildings started to collapse,” he said
“You could not see a foot in front of you for dust at first. I was trying to dig, to make my way into the shop to the two women I knew were trapped. Then the aftershock hit.”
Digging with bare hands
Part of the roof collapsed on Mr Mason, a 38-year veteran of the NSW Police. Other rescuers had to then drag him from under the rubble.
“Then everyone just started to pitch in using their hands to try to dig through to the women,” he said.
“People knew there were more tremors but they just kept going.”
Mr Mason is in New Zealand working for the Earthquake Commission, assessing buildings damaged in the September earthquake. He used his police training to organise civilians to try to dig out the two women.
“We had a conga line of about 10 people trying to burrow through the rubble,” he said.
“I reckon we moved five tonne of debris but it was useless.”
As they were digging the rocks away with their bare hands, the husband of one of the women arrived.
“He was digging frantically and told me they had a young child,” Mr Mason said.
“By the time we got to the women it was obvious they were dead. It was heartbreaking to see.”
Amazing bravery
Mr Mason said he then set up road blocks until emergency services arrived. “It was too dangerous for people to enter the area we were in.”
Mr Mason told of amazing bravery as people repeatedly risked their lives every few minutes.
“There were men and women running into buildings looking for people knowing a tremor could bring down the building on them,” he said.
“I shudder to think of what the death toll will be.”
A group of 400 Australian doctors were also at the Christchurch Convention Centre for a medical conference yesterday when the quake hit. They helped set up triage centres, but were warned off going to the hospital to help as it wasn’t safe.
“The speaker was speaking and suddenly the ground shook, glass was breaking. It was really frightening,” one Melbourne-based surgeon said.
An unknown number of tourists were inside the historic Christchurch Cathedral when the spire collapsed and the roof caved in as the quake struck. Such was the devastation, that hours later it still could not be confirmed whether anyone had been trapped beneath the rubble.
The Dean of the cathedral Peter Beck said: “We just don’t know if there were people underneath so all we can do now is just pray.”