Streets evacuated in Redcliffs

  • Breaking
  • 24/02/2011

By James Murray

Supt Russell Gibson, whose shift started at 6pm last night, says the situation in the Christchurch suburb of Redcliffs is serious.

"There are real concerns about a hill face behind a number of houses in that area and we had to evacuate about 12 streets," he said this morning.

The evacuated people have gone to live with friends and family or have gone into the welfare centres.

The overall death toll has grown to 103, and there have been no survivors found since Wednesday.

The effort continues though, says Mr Gibson.

"Brick by brick they are pulling every building apart. There are around 200 missing people that we still have concerns about."

Police met with the families of unidentified bodies today, so that they can try and match people in their mortuary with loved ones.

The identification process is "laborious", "tragic" work, as police use DNA and dental records.

"We can't afford to make a mistake here," says Mr Gibson.

Families are grief-stricken he said, they just want something "tangible".

"Every sort of emotion you can imagine would be seen from those who are in this situation. This is New Zealand's darkest day, this is raw emotion at its worst," says Mr Gibson.

Police still have the central city locked down. They have about 300 staff, including police and military manning the area.

They will try to make the cordon smaller at some point, but cannot do that while buildings are unsafe.

Mr Gibson says police understood the frustrations of those who cannot get to loved ones behind cordons, but stressed the dangers involved.

There had also been instances where people had impersonated authorities.

Mr Gibson advises people to check the IDs of officials and an explanation as to why they are there.

People could ring the police if they were still not satisfied - he hoped to have a police car in their street to clarify for them.

"I know the grief you are going through," he says.

"Please accept we have got to get this right. We have got to be thorough and meticulous. They key focus is on releasing these bodies as soon as we can and we will do everything we can to speed that process up."

3 News

source: newshub archive