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Nearly all the brick and stone buildings in Wellington collaspsed.
Many were rebuilt in wood. Around one hundred aftershocks were recorded in the five hours following the quake. -
The top of the Christchurch Cathedralspire crashed to the ground in a powerful earthquake. Luckily the stones landed in the church grounds, so the large buliding next door was not damadged. The bronze cross from the top of the spire was left dangling.
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Bob White, who was then a pupil at Whale's Flat School remeberd a magnitude 7.8 earthquake. "We were throwen to the ground, which was rocking and heaving like a boat on huge waves. After a minute, I saw a huge slip hurtling towards us. I yelled, and we got to our feet to run back towards the buliding. But the slip over took us and we went straight through the school, leaving the roof perched on top. We were saved by some poplars and chestnut tree.
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Huge landsides blocked roads and rivers. Fourteen people were killed.
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The magnutide 7.8 Napier earthquake struck on Ray Copland's first day of High School. "When I came to, I was lying in the playground. Blood poured from above my right ear, and my ear was deaf. I was all alone. There were no boys no teachers no soundes. It was a goast school. I turned and saw that the assembly hall was completely destroyed. Only a pile of bricks remanied. I realised that there must have been a earthquake and that everybody had dled homeward."
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Fallen rocks and slips closed the railway line between Christchurch and the west coast for months.
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This shadow quake caused the strongest shaking ever recorded in New Zealand. In a process callednliquefaction, layers of wet sand and silt underground were turned into a muddy liquid that bubbled up and coverd maney roads and gardens.
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Saturday, 4 September 2010, 4.35 a.m (depth 10 km)
A magnitude 7.1 earthquake woke Kieran Pine from a sound sleep. I felt my bed rocking like mad. dad came in and pulled me under the door frame. I had to hang on to him to stay balanced. Once it was light, I went scootering around with my mates to see what had happended. We had a competition for who had the most destruction in their house. One person's house had shatterd window and smashed plates every where. -
From the time they first arrived in New Zealland, Maori went through lots of earth quakes.
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The city was extensively damadged. One hundered and eighty-five people were killed and severle thousand were injured. This was the forth time the spir of Christchurch Cathedral had been badly damadged in an earthquake.