Heavy damage at quake epicentre

Houses and farms near the epicentre of today's earthquake in rural Canterbury have suffered massive damage, but the sparsely populated area is believed to have escaped serious injuries or fatalities.

The 7.1 magnitude quake 30km west of Christchurch crippled the city, leaving it without power, water, sewerage services and gas. After-shocks, some magnitude 5 or over, continued to rock the region throughout the day.

National MP Amy Adams, who lives 32km west of Christchurch at Aylesbury, said her house was substantially damaged in the terrifying early morning quake.

"It's taken a fairly big knock - it's not the worst house but it's going to need some parts of it rebuilt," Mrs Adams told NZPA.

The fire service was at the house late this afternoon trying to make it waterproof.

The chimneys in the 95-year-old house had toppled over, with one of them embedded in another part of the roof and likely to break through. Inside supporting walls were also damaged, and there were breakages and other "low-level" damage such as plaster cracks.

The chimneys came down between her bedroom and the next room.

"The noise was pretty horrendous, and I felt like the whole house was going to cave in on me but luckily it didn't.

"It was very disorienting because you're in such deep sleep, and it takes your brain quite a while to process what's even happening, and then of course you're just thinking where's the family, where are the kids, where's the husband," she said.

"The worst part of course is it's pitch black, you're trying to get out to your family, there's a lot of debris all over the floor, a lot of broken glass, and you're just trying to get everyone together and to somewhere safe, and we spent quite a few hours huddled under the kitchen table."

Her daughter narrowly missed getting hurt by a fish tank that crashed over.

Mr Adams, her husband and one child were at home, while her son was at boarding school near Timaru, and likely to stay away until the weekend.

She had been out visiting in the Selwyn electorate today and some houses were in a considerably worse state than her own. "We're just lucky that the epicentre is pretty lightly (populated), it's mostly farmland, there's not a lot of houses there."

There were no serious injuries, and the main focus now was getting people housed.

A lot of people had opened their doors to those forced out of their houses, she said.

"I've seen some houses you just about need to lean on and they'll fall over - it's just staggering actually some of the damage that I've seen, some of the damage to the roads, whole hills have been created in what were previously flat paddocks."

Power was likely to returned to the district later today, and only then will it become clear how badly damaged the water pipes are.

- NZPA