Foreign students feared dead in toppled NZ office (AP)

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand – Students from across Asia are feared among the dead in an office building that collapsed in New Zealand's earthquake, with police saying Wednesday that they were "100 percent certain" no one trapped in the rubble was alive.

Survivors of the collapse at the Canterbury Television building described a scene "like out of a horror movie" and said they were worried about dozens of friends and colleagues whose fate was still unclear.

"As we were eating lunch, there was a major shaking, and suddenly the floor fell," 19-year-old Kento Okuda told Japan's Asahi Shimbun newspaper. Okuda was studying at King's Education language school inside the building along with more than a dozen other Japanese.

"Everyone around me was saying things like 'It hurts' as they fell downward," he said. "And then I realized I was in total darkness, with my right leg pinned by something so I couldn't move."

Rescuers had to cut off his leg to free him.

By Wednesday afternoon, authorities had called off rescue operations at the building, where an unknown number of people were working or studying when the quake struck 24 hours earlier.

"We don't believe this site is now survivable," police operations commander Inspector Dave Lawry told reporters, adding that the part of the building that remains standing was in danger of collapse, weakened by quake aftershocks and fire.

A number of overseas students who were in the building when it toppled had not been located, he said, adding that he could not give an exact number.

"The sad fact is we're removing resources form this site to other sites where there is a higher chance of survivability," Lawry said.

"My heart goes out to those families ... knowing that some of their children have probably been killed in this incident."

Those trapped were thought to include as many as a dozen Japanese students attending a language school on the premises and 15 employees of a TV station. Also missing were students from Thailand, China and South Korea.

Families of the missing waited anxiously for any news that their relatives escaped the avalanche of concrete and debris unleashed by the magnitude 6.3 quake.

"We don't know whether Noriko was eating lunch inside the school, or whether she went out. If she went out, she may have survived," Shu Otsubo, whose daughter was taking classes at King's Education and hasn't been heard from since the earthquake hit, told Japanese broadcaster NHK.

Some of those trapped in the building — including a Japanese teacher and Chinese nurse — were able to use their mobile phones to contact their families. It wasn't clear if all of those who made contact with the outside world were among the more than 20 people police said had been pulled from the building.

Particularly hard hit were a group of Japanese from the Toyama College of Foreign Languages who were eating lunch at the language school when the quake hit. Thirteen of them were eventually rescued, but another 10 remained missing, according to officials at Japan's Toyama city emergency room, which was monitoring the situation.

Some of those rescued had broken bones and serious injuries, officials at the emergency center said.

Also missing were a number of nurses taking courses at the school, including six from Thailand, two from Japan and one from China, officials and media reports from those countries said. A South Korean brother and sister who studied there were also unaccounted for, the country's foreign ministry said.

"There are three situations: They are dead, they have been injured and rescued but yet to be identified by the New Zealand authorities or they are still under the building," Thai Ambassador Noppadon Theppitak said of the missing nurses.

The students at the school ranged in age from their late teens to their 60s. It wasn't possible to confirm whether all of those unaccounted for were in the building at the time of the quake.

The building was also home to its namesake television station, Canterbury TV. Company chairman Nick Smith said "probably 15" of his staff were missing.

He said those who managed to escape described a scene that was "like out of a horror movie" and broke down when recounting their ordeal.

"(They've) lost a lot of friends, a lot of colleagues, a lot of talent and a lot of lifelong relationships," Smith said.

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Associated Press writers Mari Yamaguchi and Tomoko A. Hosaka in Tokyo, Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea, and Thanyarat Doksone in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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Foreign rescue teams join search for NZ quake survivors (Reuters)

CHRISTCHURCH (Reuters) – Hundreds of foreign rescuers will join exhausted New Zealand teams on Thursday in an increasingly desperate search of quake-shattered buildings in central Christchurch as time runs out to find survivors buried under rubble.

Officials have abandoned hope of finding anyone alive in the collapsed Canterbury Television (CTV) building in the city center, including foreign students at a third-floor language school, with a grader moving in to clear debris.

Police warned about the possible collapse of a 26-story hotel unleashing a "domino" effect on surrounding building.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said the quake-prone city now faced hard decisions on rebuilding its heart.

"We are not going to walk away from this place," Parker told New Zealand television. "We may have to level entire blocks in some places."

The Director of New Zealand's Ministry of Civil Defense and Emergency Management, John Hamilton, has said rescue teams have a window of only two or three days to find people after Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude earthquake.

Seventy-five people have been confirmed dead, but that toll was expected to rise with more than 300 people missing in the country's second-biggest city. Up to 100 of those were thought to be in the CTV building, police said.

Much of the city remained without power and water, and hundreds of people queued for water supplies brought in.

It was New Zealand's most deadly natural disaster for 80 years, and one estimate said the damage could cost $12 billion.

To avoid more deaths and curb crime, police and the military placed an overnight curfew on the central business district, with soldiers patrolling in armored personnel carriers as aftershocks rattled the unstable center.

Authorities also placed an exclusion zone around the hotel, which teetered near collapse, threatening nearby buildings.

"If the Hotel Grand Chancellor falls, and three engineers say it is a significant risk, that will be dramatic, a domino effect in the central city of other unstable buildings. It will be a major disaster," said police Superintendent Dave Cliff.

Rescue teams had to perform amputations to free some of the 120 survivors pulled from the wreckage of the tremor, which was the second strong quake to hit the historic tourist city in five months.

But there were moments of elation. A woman, Ann Bodkin, was rescued from a destroyed finance company building after a day trapped under a desk.

Cliff said as many as 100 bodies could be under the television building, while scores more could lie beneath the city's shattered cathedral and other nearby buildings.

A national state of emergency has been declared. It is the country's worst natural disaster since a 1931 quake in the North Island city of Napier which killed 256.

Christchurch Hospital received an influx of injured residents, with broken limbs, crush injuries and lacerations.

Thousands of people were facing a second night in emergency shelters in local schools, community halls and at a racecourse. Pope Benedict sent a message of support for survivors and rescuers from the Vatican.

"My thoughts turn especially to the people there who are being severely tested by this tragedy," he said. "I also ask you to join me in praying for all who have lost their lives."

Rescuers from the United States, Britain, Taiwan and Japan arrive in New Zealand on Thursday, with the first of 148 Australian specialists already on the streets.

ECONOMIC IMPACT

Indications of the big economic impact of the quake are starting to emerge. J.P. Morgan estimated insured losses could be $12 billion, according to a source who had seen a research note.

When asked about possible costs, Prime minister John Key told reporters: "No one's in a position to actually assess that." He said he hoped Christchurch could still host rugby World Cup matches later this year as planned.

Key said the country could afford to rebuild Christchurch, but reinsurance risk would probably worsen.

Catastrophe modeling firm AIR Worldwide Estimates said the insurance industry faces damage claims of between NZ$5 billion ($3.5 billion) and NZ$11.5 billion ($8 billion).

Reinsurers Munich Re, Swiss Re and Hannover Re, who help insurers cover big losses, took many weeks to provide damage estimates from the September quake due to complexities of assessing structural damage to buildings.

The disaster fueled talk that the central bank might cut interest rates in coming weeks to shore up confidence in the already-fragile national economy, but the bank did not mention monetary policy on Wednesday when it commented on the quake.

Seeing the quake as a further blow to the economy, Standard Chartered bank is revising down its 2011 GDP growth forecast for New Zealand to 1.4 percent and 2.7 percent for 2012 -- from 2.0 percent and 3.0 percent respectively, because of a double-dip in the housing market, tightening budget and sluggish local demand. ($1 = 1.339 New Zealand dollars)

(Writing by Rob Taylor; Editing by Ed Davies and Sugita Katyal)

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