Christchurch’s Famous Steeple Destroyed By Earthquake

My thoughts today are with the good people of Christchurch who are trying to recover from yet another earthquake in the past 5 months.  This earthquake registered a 6.3 but occurred during a busy period of the day compared to the prior 7.1 earthquake:

Right now reports are saying their are up to 65 people dead and more being recovered.  Very sad.  It was also very sad to see such a symbol of the city, the Christchurch Cathedral destroyed:

THE spire of the landmark Christchurch Cathedral, sheared off and strewn about as rubble, offers a dire symbol of the impact of yesterday’s earthquake.

Christchurch was built around the graceful 130-year-old neo-Gothic structure. It is one of New Zealand’s top tourist drawcards, as much a symbol of this city as is Sydney’s Harbour Bridge.

But the Anglican cathedral’s dean, the Reverend Peter Beck, said the building’s partial destruction, which included part of its roof caving in, was unimportant in light of the human cost of the disaster.

Advertisement: Story continues below

Mr Beck rushed from his office to help visitors in the building after the quake hit.

”We got what people we could, but we don’t know what’s under the rubble,” he said. ”There was so much dust in the building you couldn’t see.”

At least two survivors were rescued from the cathedral rubble, but witnesses said they expected fatalities there.  [The Age]

When my wife and I toured through New Zealand we flew into Christchurch, but we really didn’t spend much time there.  We did find the city to be quite nice and pleasant like most cities in New Zealand and the International Antarctica Centre was definitely fun to check out.  I’m sure the citizens of Christchurch will rebound from this tragedy and the city will become a nice place to visit once again.