Hope is fading that many more survivors will be recovered from the wreckage of central Christchurch, with fears for more than 300 people still missing after Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude earthquake.
The death toll was confirmed at 76, but the number is expected to rise significantly as more bodies are uncovered. Around 120 people have been rescued, but reports of fresh "live searches" on Thursday morning appeared unfounded by the afternoon.
John Key, New Zealand's prime minister, said that a rescue operation remained under way, despite a growing sense that the chances of anyone being found alive were minimal. He said that police would soon begin releasing the names of those confirmed dead or missing. Police said the number of missing could be much higher than the 300 estimated so far. Officials reported that the sounds emanating from rubble in the city – mobile phone sounds and tapping – had fallen silent.
Bulldozers have moved in on the Canterbury TV building, with hopes of recovering survivors abandoned. More than 100 people were thought to be inside, 90 staff and students at an English language college among them, including at least 10 students visiting from Japan.
"We don't believe this site is now survivable," the police operations commander, Inspector Dave Lawry, told reporters. Efforts would now be shifted to sites where there was more hope.
A Chinese housemate of Christchurch resident Michael Ponsonby, 63, was among those caught in the CTV building. His housemate had been in Christchurch studying English.
It was futile to believe she might have survived, he said. "I know she's died. The police don't say it to you in quite those words, but there's an understanding. That building is a write-off."Ponsonby, 63, told the Guardian that he had been in touch with her family in China after posting details on the Google earthquake victim service. Her sister had emailed shortly afterwards, and he had since spoken to her on the phone. It was the first contact the student's family had had with New Zealand. "They'd seen the coverage on TV, and I think were preparing themselves to think the worst."
A further 25 people were believed to have been trapped under the collapsed Christchurch Cathedral, and another 20 in the Pyne Gould Buidling.
Kenti Manning, 15, and his sister Lizzy, 18, had been holding an overnight vigil outside the CTV building for their missing mother, Donna, a television presenter. "My mum is superwoman, she'd do anything," Lizzy told stuff.co.nz. Soon afterwards, the website reported, a police official bent down beside the pair to say he had "some horrible news" – that their mother could not have survived.
Jason Ecclestone, who arrived in Christchurch having driven down the country from Hamilton, was clinging to hope for his two-year-old daughter and his aunt. They had been in the Cathedral Square area at the time the earthquake hit, Ecclestone, 35, told the Guardian, and had not been heard from since.
"We just haven't heard anything from them," he said. "I still have hope. But I know that by day two, day three it's not so good for people."
Speaking to the Guardian from her family home near the epicentre of the quake, one resident said few people expected any miracles, nearly two days after the earthquake struck. "It's just too late, too long," she said. "Everyone here knows what is going on – even the kids. Everyone here knows someone who died."
Police have imposed a curfew in the centre of the city, with local people urged to stay at home unless travel is essential. People venturing into the city to view the damage would hamper rescue efforts, said police superintendent Dave Cliff.
Hundreds of police, troops and emergency workers using heat-seeking cameras and sniffer dogs were checking the wreckage of buildings toppled by the quake, which caused damage estimated to cost more than £7bn. "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," Superintendent Cliff said.
There are also large numbers of people hurt in the quake, with Christchurch's main hospital inundated with those suffering spinal, head and chest injuries. However, officials said the health system was largely coping, with some patients moved to other cities.
More than 3,000 homes in the affected area were uninhabitable, while 80% were without water, and nearly half without electricity.
Amid the tragedy there were occasional, brief moments of joy. Rescue workers clapped and cheered as Ann Bodkin was pulled from the remains of the Pyne Gould Guinness building. She had spent a day trapped under her desk.
Christchurch's mayor, Bob Parker, said: "In the midst of what is by and large one of the bleakest days in the story of our city, the sun came out at the same moment as they removed Ann from that building."Other rescues proved more harrowing, with construction manager Fred Haering describing rescuers using a hacksaw to amputate a trapped man's leg, allowing him to be freed. Haering told the New Zealand Herald the man had a leg pinned under concrete. A doctor gave him strong painkillers while a fireman asked Haering for a hacksaw to remove the man's leg.
Power remains off for about half the city and water is yet to be restored for large areas, prompting concerns for public health. Anxiety was high for the hard-hit suburbs of Sumner and Lyttleton, which remain difficult to access. Late on Wednesday police confirmed parts of Sumner were being evacuated.
Roads and pavements are strewn with bricks, cracks, gaping holes and sludge. Traffic lights have almost all failed and army vehicles are parked across intersections.
Police have imposed a strict cordon around the centre of the city, and imposed an overnight curfew. At least six arrests were reported for looting. A number of Japanese journalists were reported to have been arrested after defying a cordon at the hospital.
The airport has reopened for both domestic and international flights. Many foreign nationals have been leaving the temporary camps in which they were accommodated – including tents in Hagley Park, which had been erected to house the annual Ellerslie flower show, but which was closed owing to inclement weather.
Structural damage and a lack of electricity and water mean few shops or petrol stations in the city can open. Some petrol stations have reported angry clashes among drivers vying to fill up.
A handful of corner shops have kept their doors open despite the restrictions, serving customers in the near-dark.
The UK high commissioner to New Zealand, Vicki Treadwell, speaking to the Guardian in Christchurch, said she was unable to confirm any British nationals were among the dead or missing. She said she had been in touch with emergency authorities, and with officials at the hospital and the mortuary, but was unable to glean any firm information. "At the moment, there are still no British people confirmed among those injured in hospital or found dead, but clearly it is possible that there will be some," she said.
Treadwell said she had directly asked the head of accident and emergency at Christchurch Hospital why they were unable to give information about nationality. She was told that the speed imperative in admitting patients on Tuesday meant that usual protocols, including recording nationality and next of kin, were not followed.
It was hoped that names of any Britons dead or injured would start to emerge early this morning UK time, said Treadwell. She and Foreign Office staff would then move to contact any relatives.
Treadwell said she would travel to Christchurch airport to meet an advance party of 12 British rescue workers. They will be followed by a larger team of 50, who will be deployed alongside existing crews on the ground.
British officials had helped 130 Britons who were in Christchurch at the time of the earthquake. A temporary UK consular office has been set up at the Copthorne Commodore hotel in Christchurch.
It was revealed that days before the earthquake, scientists at the New Zealand government's Institute of Geological and Nuclear Sciences (GNS) assessed the probability of an earthquake of more than 6-magnitude at one in 25. The quake, some three miles from the surface near the central city, registered at 6.3.
Bill Fry, a seismologist at GNS, told the Guardian: "A day or two before it happened we ran the statistics and determined a 4% chance of a magnititude over six event within four weeks, and a 45% chance of an even of five or more.
Fry dismissed suggestions that there was confusion as to whether the earthquake was an aftershock – it was clearly related to the 7.1-magnitude September earthquake. "It was an aftershock of that earthquake. It's not belittling it to say it's an aftershock; it's still an earthquake."