Amid New Zealand tragedy, a rescue and a wedding (AP)

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand – Clutching her groom, she looked like any beaming bride. But Emma Howard's trip down the aisle Friday almost didn't happen. Just 72 hours earlier she was trapped under a building that collapsed in the earthquake.

The 23-year-old was rescued nearly six hours after sending a frantic text to her fiancee, who helped pull her out.

"I got this text ... saying 'It's Emma here. I'm OK and I love you very much," said Chris Greenslade, who was outside his office across town when the disaster struck Tuesday afternoon and raced to find Howard.

Coming around the side of her building, he was horrified to find a tangled pile of metal beams and concrete, with the roof pancaked at a 45-degree angle. "It was honestly the worst thing I've ever felt in my life," he said.

The office tower was destroyed, and Howard was trapped in a tiny cavity between collapsed floors. Greenslade dug through the debris, pulling others free as he tried to reach Howard. He then helped direct the rescue crews that eventually found her.

During the ordeal, Howard said Greenslade kept her calm by sending her reassuring texts.

"His message said, 'I'm with your parents. I love you. There are lots of men trying to get you out,'" she told Associated Press Television News.

The couple was all smiles as they left Christ the King Church on Friday — she in a white strapless dress with a lace bodice and pale pink bow at the back pinned with a cameo brooch, he in a dark suit and purple tie.

Surrounded by family, friends and their wedding party, Howard raised her right hand and pointed to the heavens, smiling exuberantly.

Thoughts of her nuptials, which had been planned for months, raced through her head as she lay for hours pinned on the floor, Howard said.

After her rescue, "I said to people, 'When I was in there I was thinking, I'm meant to be married in three days,'" she said. "And they said to me, 'You still are.'"

"Everybody was determined we were still getting married. And I was like, 'OK, then.'"

Their happy day had its solemn moments, with the pastor recalling that many in this city where at least 123 perished and more than 200 are missing were not so lucky.

It was a twist of fate not lost on the young couple.

While the bridesmaids wore purple dresses as Howard had planned, the groomsmen were in white shirt sleeves; their suits were lost in the temblor. They also lost their cake.

"But everything else has gone to plan. We are just so lucky," Greenslade said.

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New Zealand earthquake toll at 145 dead (AP)

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand – Fresh aftershocks sent masonry tumbling among rescuers in New Zealand's quake zone and a cat sparked false alarms Saturday of a possible survivor, as the disaster's death toll rose to 145 with more than 200 missing.

Grim assessments emerged for the fate of the central business district in devastated Christchurch, with engineers and planners saying it will be unusable for months and that about a third of the buildings must be destroyed and rebuilt.

On the outer edge of the district, Brent Smith watched in tears as workers demolished his 1850s-era house, where he had run a bed and breakfast and where antique jugs and a $6,000 Victorian bed were reduced to shards and firewood. His three daughters hugged him, also weeping.

"You don't know whether to laugh or cry but I've been doing more of the latter," Smith said.

Prime Minister John Key, who spent some of the afternoon speaking to families who lost loved ones in the disaster, called on all New Zealanders to hold two minutes of silence next Tuesday to remember victims and the ordeal of the survivors.

"This may be New Zealand's single-most tragic event," Key said.

Key said the government would announce an aid package Monday for an estimated 50,000 people who will be out of work for months due to the closure of downtown.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker assured relatives of the missing — including people from several countries who have converged on this southern New Zealand city of 350,000_ that every effort was being made to locate any remaining survivors of Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude quake.

No one was found alive overnight as a multinational team of more than 600 rescuers continued scouring the city's central business district, although a paramedic reported hearing voices in one destroyed building early Saturday, Police Superintendent Russel Gibson said.

"We mobilized a significant number of people and sent a dog in again — and a cat jumped out," Gibson said, adding that a rescue team removed "a significant amount of rubble to be 100 percent" certain that no person was trapped inside.

Police have said up to 120 bodies may be entombed in the ruins of the downtown CTV building alone, where dozens of foreign students from an international school were believed trapped.

Still, Gibson said rescuers weren't completely ruling out good news.

"I talked to experts who say we've worked on buildings like this overseas and we get miracles. New Zealand deserves a few miracles," he said.

The King's Education language school released a list of missing people presumed in the building: nine teachers and 51 students — 26 Japanese, 14 Chinese, six Filipinos, three Thais, one South Korean and one Czech. An additional 20 students were listed with "status unknown."

The death toll rose Saturday to 145 after additional bodies were pulled from wrecked buildings, Police Superintendent David Cliff said. More than 200 people remain missing, he said.

At Christchurch's iconic cathedral, workers had just begun work on its ruined bell tower late Friday when fresh aftershocks sent more masonry tumbling from the building.

Rescuers were immediately withdrawn while the safety of the 130-year old church was reassessed and a new plan made to reach as many as 22 people who may be entombed inside.

The city's central business district will take several months to recover, Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee said, adding that "most of the services, in fact all of the services that are offered in the CBD will need to relocate elsewhere."

Damaged buildings will need to be bulldozed and rebuilt "so that people can have confidence about coming back into the area to transact any business that's here."

One in three of the central city's mostly brick buildings were severely damaged in the quake and must be demolished, earthquake engineer Jason Ingham said.

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New Zealand Miracle: Woman Saved After Spending 27 Hours Under Earthquake Rubble (Time.com)

New Zealand rescuers pulled out a woman alive who had been trapped in rubble for over 24 hours after a massive 6.3 Christchurch earthquake left at least 75 people dead on Tuesday. (Read more about the intial reports from the disaster.)
Ann Bodkin was rescued from the collapsed Pyne Gould Corporation building in the early afternoon, approximately 27 hours after the earthquake struck the city. She had been trapped under her desk, and luckily, had no injuries.
Originally, rescuers thought Bodkin was another victim, an Australian woman named Ann Voss, who has been in contact with people under the rubble on her cell phone. Voss, however, has not been found. Approximately 300 people remain missing on Wednesday as rescuers continue their work. (Read about more about the recent Christchurch earthquake.)
It took three hours for rescuers to reach Bodkin through the debris of the four-story building, guided by her tapping through a wall. Her husband was waiting next to the debris when they managed to pull her out. "I was told to get myself down here because she was asking for me. I didn't break any speed limits but I got here pretty quickly," he told Shepparton News. (See pictures of the earthquake damage in Christchurch.)
Yesterday's earthquake comes close on the heels of another major quake in Christchurch on New Zealand's South Island just five months ago. Though that earthquake, which struck near dawn in September, was stronger, no one was killed; the high number of fatalities in this week's unfolding tragedy have been attributed to the fact that it occurred in the late morning on a weekday.
The September earthquake is estimated to have caused over $3 billion in damages. There is no official figure yet about the cost of this week's disaster, but New Zealand Prime Minister's estimates that it will be at least another $3 billion in damages, while Australian companies are estimating the final tally will be closer to $12 billion. (See pictures of the damage from the September 2010 Christchurch earthquake.)
New Zealand's deadliest earthquake was the Hawke's Bay earthquake in 1931. The magnitude 7.8 earthquake killed 256 people on the nation's North Island. The more recent Christchurch earthquake happened along a fault line that was previously unknown until recently.
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Weaker New Zealand quake packed a deadlier punch (AP)

LOS ANGELES – The latest New Zealand earthquake was a deadly combination of distance, depth and timing.
While weaker than the one that rocked the area last September, it did more damage and cost lives, primarily because of its location.
Tuesday's magnitude-6.3 quake was centered about 3 miles from the populated hub of Christchurch, toppling buildings, killing dozens and trapping others. It was also only about 3 miles deep and occurred during the middle of a workday when commercial buildings were filled with employees.
The jolt "is squarely beneath the city itself," said seismologist Egill Hauksson of the California Institute of Technology. "All the old historic buildings are being shaken more violently than they were built to withstand."
Scientists classified it as an aftershock of the powerful magnitude-7 that struck last Sept. 4.
No one died in that early morning quake — which was 11 times stronger — mainly because it was centered farther away, about 30 miles west of the city center. It was also twice as deep as Tuesday's aftershock. Shallower quakes tend to be more damaging.
While New Zealand has strict building codes, Christchurch has a number of pre-World War II buildings that were badly damaged by the September quake, which also triggered landslides in the area.
Another reason why this latest quake was more deadly is because buildings that were previously weakened by ground shaking were more likely to suffer damage or even collapse this time around, said Tom Jordan, who heads the Southern California Earthquake Center.
Many cities on the U.S. West Coast face similar seismic risks, experts say.
The West Coast has similar soil as New Zealand, which can turn to mush during an earthquake and worsen damage done by shaking, said Robert Yeats, professor emeritus of geology at Oregon State University.
"New Zealand has some of the most progressive building codes in the world. They are better prepared for an earthquake like this than many U.S. cities would be," Yeats said in a statement.
Since September, about half a dozen aftershocks greater than magnitude-5 have rattled Christchurch. Tuesday's was the largest aftershock to date.
"You can have an aftershock months after the main shock," said geophysicist Paul Earle of the U.S. Geological Survey in Golden, Colo. "Just because a few months have gone by doesn't mean you can't have a large, damaging earthquake."
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U.S. Geological Survey: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/
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New Zealand quake kills at least 65 (Reuters)

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – A strong earthquake killed at least 65 people in New Zealand's second-biggest city of Christchurch on Tuesday, with more casualties expected as rescuers worked into the night to find scores of people trapped inside collapsed buildings.

It was the second quake to hit the city of almost 400,000 people in five months, and New Zealand's most deadly natural disaster for 80 years.

"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.

"It's hard to describe. What was a vibrant city a few hours ago has been brought to its knees," added Key, who had flown to his home town of Christchurch, where he still has family.

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

Christchurch's mayor described the city, a historic tourist town popular with overseas students, as a war zone.

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

He told local radio that up to 200 could be trapped in buildings but later revised down to around 100 or so.

The quake is the country's worst natural disaster since a 1931 quake in the North Island city of Napier which killed 256.

Christchurch Hospital saw an influx of injured residents.

"They are largely crushes and cuts types of injuries and chest pain as well," said David Meates, head of the Canterbury Health Board. Some of the more seriously injured could be evacuated to other cities, he added.

TRAPPED

All army medical staff have been mobilized, while several hundred troops were helping with the rescue, officials said.

A woman trapped in one of the buildings said she was terrified and waiting for rescuers to reach her six hours after the quake, which was followed by at least 20 aftershocks.

"I thought the best place was under the desk but the ceiling collapsed on top, I can't move and I'm just terrified," office worker Anne Voss told TV3 news by mobile phone.

Christchurch has been described as a little piece of England. It has an iconic cathedral, now largely destroyed, and a river called the Avon. It had many historic stone buildings, and is popular with English-language students and also with tourists as a springboard for tours of the scenic South Island.

Twelve Japanese students at a school in Christchurch were still missing after a building collapse, an official told Reuters in Japan. Nine Japanese students and two teachers from the same group had already been rescued or accounted for.

Emergency shelters had also been set up in local schools and at a race course, as night approached. Helicopters dumped water to try to douse a fire in one tall office building. A crane helped rescue workers trapped in another office block.

"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 center when the quake hit.

"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," he said.

Emergency crews picked through rubble under bright lights as night fell, 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-colored 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 on any casualties.

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.

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.

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

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

(Additional reporting by Bruce Hextall, Michael Smith and Cecile Lefort in Sydney; Saika Takano in Tokyo; Writing by Mark Bendeich and Ed Davies; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

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