7,500 quakes challenge Christchurch's resolve

CHRISTCHURCH, New Zealand - It has been 10 months since the first big earthquake struck New Zealand's second-largest city. It has been nearly five months since a far more devastating one killed 181 people and crippled the downtown. And it has been just a few hours since yet another aftershock startled Christchurch residents during the night.

"I stop breathing," said Sheridan Cattermole, a bartender and a mother. "I get pins and needles all over. I either freeze or run. I just want things to be back to what they were like this time last year. I had my vege garden, and my sunflowers."

Seismologists have recorded 7,500 earthquakes in Christchurch since September - an average of more than 20 a day. The rumblings are rattling the psyche of the still-battered city. They have left the land under thousands of homes unsafe to build on. Some people have left town. Yet many have proven resilient, and some see a reconstruction boom on the horizon.

Christchurch is the disaster that the world forgot. When the deadly quake toppled the iconic cathedral spire and flattened buildings in this city of 390,000, people around the globe paid attention. But two weeks later, the massive Japan earthquake and tsunami that left more than 23,000 dead and missing took center stage.

In New Zealand, the quake in Christchurch is reverberating. In a country of four million people, the cost of the quakes - estimated at more than $12 billion - amounts to 8 percent of annual economic output. Hurricane Katrina's costs were less than 1 percent of U.S. gross domestic product. Christchurch is likely to eclipse the Japan disaster in cost per person.

And nobody knows whether the worst has passed.

When Kevin Furlong, a professor of geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, came to Christchurch on a sabbatical last year, he thought he would be studying earthquakes in the abstract - not living through them.

The quakes in the city have not followed the classic pattern, he said. Typically, a big quake hits and is followed by a series of ever-diminishing aftershocks.

In Christchurch, the initial Sept. 4 magnitude-7.0 quake did not cause widespread destruction because it was centered 30 miles west of the city, but it helped trigger at least two distinct new quakes on different fault lines, each with its own pattern of aftershocks.

First came a deadly 6.1-magnitude quake Feb. 22, which was centered almost directly under a residential area and flattened buildings that withstood the earlier quake. Then a 6.0-magnitude quake struck June 13. Though no one died, it was a psychological blow to people trying to rebuild.

Earthquakes are maddeningly difficult to predict, Furlong said. There is no way of knowing whether more is to come, he said.

New Zealand geologists estimated last week that there was a 23 percent chance another big quake would hit within a year, down from 30 percent last month.

"I've become much more attuned to what the public wants to know: 'When will it stop and why are we having them?' " Furlong said.

It's hard to gauge the long-term effect of the quakes. School enrollment is down about 7 percent - an indication of families leaving - and the economy is fragile. Retail sales are down about 11 percent. Unemployment claims are up about 14 percent.

The city center remains off-limits behind chain-link fences and will stay that way for months, possibly years.

Demolition crews plan to tear down about 1,000 hotels, office buildings, and other unsafe structures. So far, they have taken down fewer than 150. City officials estimate it will take nine months just to demolish the 26-story Hotel Grand Chancellor, which has been teetering since February.

The new downtown is likely to be much lower. Christchurch residents appear to have little appetite for high-rises these days. Said Connal Townsend, chief executive of the Property Council of New Zealand, which represents commercial property owners, "The magic number I'm hearing is three stories."