Major earthquake rocks New Zealand, damage to exceed $1 billion
At 12:51 PM local time on February 22 (11:51 PM GMT on February 21), a magnitude 6.3 earthquake occurred near Christchurch, New Zealand.
Initial reports say the quake killed at least 65 people and hundreds more have been rescued from the debris of damaged buildings.
The city and region was affected by a magnitude 7.0 earthquake on September 4, 2010, which caused significant damages to the community.
Catastrophe modeler EQECAT says that estimating damages from the most recent seismic events is challenging, as many of the most fragile buildings were already damaged from September’s quake, and repair work was still ongoing. EQECAT said it is researching this area more extensively to develop a method to separate the new damage estimate, but current indicators are that damage from this new event will exceed $1 Billion (USD).
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