TV One over here has been transmitting 'live' from about 4pm and won't finish coverage till 11 pm. Lot of people hurt from falling debris and masonry. Some amazing escapes, 5 floor collapse and crawl out !!
Christchurch will never be the same after this, so many old buildings gone, history destroyed. The Cathedral spire and north wall just crumbled. Lots of offers of help from overseas, bunch of Aussie USARs arriving tomorrow (Thanks you guys, much appreciated
).
Fault line .. if you look at the region it is not a fault but a series of parallel tears where the tectonic plate has a kink in it from down the coast to across the the alpine divide so it could rumble on any of many cracks. There has been nearly 5000 aftershocks since the Sep 4th 7.1 mag earthquake. Check out
www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz to see it all happen in sequence. Gives you a good idea of the geology of the area.
Now we're all just holding our breath to see how bad it is tomorrow.