Exhausted rescuers feel quake’s emotional toll

NEW ZEALAND: Devastated rescue workers had to be dragged away from the wreckage of Christchurch’s CTV building, unable to stop thinking of the entombed earthquake victims they were leaving behind. “It’s not a matter of just walking away from a worksite, they were touching bodies,” said police commander Dave Cliff, describing how searchers refused to leave the fire-scarred site on Wednesday night, 24 hours after the tremor.

“This is deeply emotional for those people working on this. They do it because they have an absolute desire to help people, to find people to rescue.”

About 700 rescue workers are now sifting steel and concrete wreckage in central Christchurch, New Zealand’s second-biggest city, which was hammered Tuesday by the vicious 6.3-magnitude earthquake.

They have come from all parts of the world to help in the increasingly bleak hunt for survivors, with fears mounting that all 228 people still missing were dead.

But many are local men and women who have been directly affected by the earthquake, leaving their lives in turmoil as they pursue their grim task. “The first thing they all talk about is what happened in that first 12 hours, the trauma, trying to get people out from under the rubble,” said Greg O’Connor, president of New Zealand’s police association.

“And then when you actually talk to the local staff a little further they start talking about what the impact has been on them and their own families.”

No sign of life has been detected since Wednesday, but Mount Cook rescue volunteer Charlie Hobbs is holding out hope of a miraculous rescue. “You have to, I’m an eternal optimist,” he told AFP from the rubble of the city’s cathedral, where up to 22 people are believed to be buried.

“I know that Canterbury people are fairly robust tough people and we’ll get back.”

Hobbs and his wife, a volunteer rescue nurse, packed up their things as soon as it became clear how bad the tremor was and sped towards Christchurch, an exodus of cars from the besieged city passing in the other direction.

CHRISTCHURCH, Friday, AFP