CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand — The powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake that smashed buildings, cracked roads and twisted rail lines around the New Zealand city of Christchurch also ripped a new 11-foot-wide fault line in the earth’s surface, officials said early today.
At least 500 buildings, including 90 downtown properties, have been designated as destroyed in the quake that struck at 4:35 a.m. Saturday (10:35 p.m. Friday, Mountain time) near the South Island city of 400,000 people. But most other buildings sustained only minor damage.
Only two serious injuries were reported from the quake as chimneys and walls of older buildings were reduced to rubble. The prime minister said it was a miracle no one was killed.
Power was cut across the region, roads were blocked by debris, and gas and water supplies were disrupted, Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker said. He warned continuing aftershocks could cause masonry to fall from damaged buildings, as could gale force winds due to buffet the region today.
Canterbury University geology professor Mark Quigley said what “looks to us that it could be a new fault” had ripped across the earth and pushed some surface areas up about 3 feet.
The quake was caused by the ongoing collision between the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates, he said.
“One side of the earth has lurched to the right . . . up to 11 feet and in some places been thrust up,” Quigley said.
Roger Bates, whose dairy farm at Darfield was close to the quake’s epicenter, said the new fault line had ripped up the surface across his land.
“The whole dairy farm is like the sea now, with real (soil) waves right across the dairy farm. We don’t have physical holes, (but) where the fault goes through, it’s been raised a meter or meter and a half,” he told National Radio.
“Trouble is, I’ve lost two meters of land off my boundary,” he added.
Experts said the low number of injuries in the powerful quake reflects the country’s strict building codes.
“New Zealand has very good building codes . . . (that) mean the buildings are strong compared with, say, Haiti,” which suffered widespread damage in a magnitude-7.0 quake this year, earth sciences professor Martha Savage told The Associated Press.
