New Zealand evacuates tourists from quake-hit town

Wellington:New Zealand emergency services and defense personnel began evacuating hundreds of tourists and residents from a small South Island town amid more strong aftershocks on Tuesday, a day after a powerful earthquake killed two people.

The 7.8-magnitude tremor struck just after midnight on Sunday, destroying farm homesteads, sending glass and masonry toppling from buildings in the capital, Wellington, and cutting road and rail links throughout the northeast of the ruggedly beautiful South Island.

The town of Kaikoura, a popular base for whale-watching about 150 km (90 miles) northeast of Christchurch, the South Island's main city, was completely cut off by massive landslips.

Four defense force helicopters flew in to the town on Tuesday morning and the Navy's multi-role vessel HMNZS Canterbury was heading to the area, Air Commander Darryn Webb, acting commander of New Zealand joint forces, told TVNZ.

"The priority today is the airlift operation," he said. "We're looking to do as many flights as we can out of Kaikoura today ... to move approximately 200 of those tourists and residents south."

Around 1,200 tourists were stranded in the town, officials said, and other emergency services were also using helicopters to fly in supplies and fly out those who wanted to leave.

Mark Solomon, a leader of South Island indigenous Maori Ngai Tahu tribe, which has tourism and fisheries businesses around Kaikoura, said the local marae (Maori meeting place) had received 1,000 people since Monday morning. Many slept overnight in the communal hall or in vehicles outside.

The tribe had fed them with crayfish, a delicacy for which the South Island town is famous. With no power, the tanks that hold the expensive crustaceans had stopped pumping.

"It’s better to use the food than throw it in the rubbish so we sent it up to the marae to feed people," Solomon told Reuters by phone.

AFTERSHOCKS, WIND AND RAIN

Gale-force winds and rain were hampering recovery efforts, and hundreds of aftershocks continued to rock the region. A 5.4 tremor was among the bigger aftershocks felt as far away as Wellington on Tuesday.

China chartered four helicopters to evacuate around 40 nationals, mostly elderly and children, from Kaikoura late on Monday, said Liu Lian, an official at the Chinese Consulate in Christchurch.

One Chinese national had been treated for a minor head injury in Kaikoura's hospital, Liu said, and around 60 others would be evacuated on Tuesday.

"They have been trapped in Kaikoura for a couple of days, some are maybe scared, they have some mental stress," Liu told Reuters. Many planned to continue journeys to other parts of New Zealand, Liu said.

Prime Minister John Key flew over Kaikoura on Monday and described the landslides in the mountainous area as "just horrendous". The repair bill was likely to run into billions of dollars, he said.

Civil Defence estimated 80,000-100,000 landslides had been caused by the quakes.

Acting Civil Defence Minister Gerry Brownlee said New Zealand had accepted an offer of two U.S. Navy helicopters from the destroyer the USS Sampson, as well as an offer of help from the Japanese military.

Workers began returning to office buildings in Wellington's business district, which was closed off on Monday while the city council assessed the risk to buildings.

Several blocks were damaged by the tremor, including the offices of Statistics New Zealand, which said the release of economic data had been halted and that it would be months before it could use the building.

An A-League soccer match scheduled for Saturday between the Wellington Phoenix and Australia's Melbourne Victory has been postponed because of damage to Wellington's 34,000-seat Westpac Stadium, officials said.

The venue had been cleared of major structural damage but had sustained burst water pipes, cracked concrete and broken windows.

New Zealand lies in the seismically active "Ring of Fire", a 40,000-km arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches that encircles much of the Pacific Ocean.

Christchurch is still recovering from a 6.3 magnitude quake in 2011 that killed 185 people.