Earthquake in New Zealand

If you have seen any of the footage or photos from the aftermath you will know of the devastation and loss across the city. This is the 2nd large quake to hit Christchurch in 5 months. The first was 7.1 and despite the magnitude there was no loss of life (To put this into perspective the Haiti earthquake was recorded as 7.0)
The quake on the 22nd February was 6.3 but because of the timing and shallow depth has caused far greater destruction and loss of life. Additionally, there have been more than 120 shocks since Tuesday's tremor, the greatest of which was magnitude 5.7.

I know of one colleague that is missing, feared dead. The tragic irony is that they had moved into a new building after the first quake last year and this building is one of the most badly damaged (CTV building, 122 people are still missing).
It's not just a local tragedy, that building I was speaking of, had an English language school with students from Japan, China and Taiwan. As Christchurch is a major travel destination many have been caught up in the resulting chaos. There was a US trade delegation in Christchurch at the time of the quake.
Both the best and worst of human nature comes to the surface in events such as these. There has a tremendous outpouring of help which been staggering. There are 700 search and rescue staff working in the city from Singapore, Japan, UK and USA, among others. People around the country have opened there homes for evacuees and a 10,000 strong army of students is lending a hand to name a few examples.The national airline has added 1600 seats a day to get people out and offered international airfares for affected families to fly home to Christchurch.
On the down side, people have been impersonating officials to loot houses, and burglaries including the home of one of the missing.  With the city's infrastructure broken, some decided to make communication more difficult by stealing back-up generators for the phone system. Unfortunately there are also phishing emails doing the rounds asking for donates in the name of the Red Cross.

If you would like to assist, consider making a donation to:

the NZ Red Cross www.redcross.org.nz/donate

the UK Red Cross http://www.redcross.org.uk/About-us/News/2011/February/Red-Cross-la...

the Australian Red Cross https://www.redcross.org.au/Donations/onlineDonations.asp