9 September 2010 / AP, CHRISTCHURCH
A powerful new 5.1-magnitude aftershock rattled terrified residents of New Zealand’s earthquake-stricken city of Christchurch on Wednesday, as officials doubled their estimate for repairing the damage from nearly 300 aftershocks in five days.
The latest quake, just four miles (6.4 kilometers) below the earth’s surface and centered six miles (10 kilometers) southeast of the city, was felt by residents as the strongest aftershock in Christchurch since Saturday’s 7.1 magnitude earthquake wrecked hundreds of buildings. Nobody was reported injured by the latest temblor. “My guts is just churning up here. When will this thing end? It is like living in a maelstrom,” Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said as workers streamed from the city’s emergency headquarters. “We have got staff in tears ... power is out and a lot of people are very, very churned up by that,” he told the NewstalkZB radio station. “We were restarting to think maybe, just maybe, we are over the worst of this, and now we have had this shocking event,» Parker said. “This is a hammer blow to the spirit of a lot of people..” After his second, closer look at the quake carnage on Wednesday, Prime Minister John Key said he thought that rebuilding the city would cost more than the initial estimates of 2 billion New Zealand dollars ($1.4 billion), with at least 500 buildings already condemned and about 100,000 of the area’s 160,000 house damaged.
