'Significant damage' from Christchurch quake

After visiting the quake-stricken Canterbury region today, Labour leader Phil Goff said he was impressed by the strength of those left homeless by the 7.1 magnitude earthquake.

"People are remarkably resilient and upbeat considering their experience," he told NZPA.

"I was talking to a couple who were moving all their possessions out onto a trailer from a house that was obviously only going to be fit for demolition. They were saying things like 'well, it could be a lot worse, think of the people in Pakistan where their homes and property have been destroyed, they have nobody to help them out, their kids are suffering from disease'... so people, I think, are being incredibly strong."

Mr Goff spent the day in the region, and said he was struck by how extensive the damage was, not only in the central city.

"You see that damage right across the community, driving down roads where every second chimney has broken off and smashed through the roof of houses," he said

In Pine's Beach, near Kaiapoi, he said many houses had simply slipped off their foundations and sunk into the sand.

Despite their ordeal, people still retained their sense of humour.

"One young lady there on a bike... said, 'I slept through it all until a picture fell off the wall and hit me in the head'."

Labour's MP for Christchurch Central, Brendon Burns, was unable to return to his damaged house and was staying with friends, Mr Goff said.

"Another colleague who still hasn't had the water restored and she said, 'well, I put a lot of perfume on this morning'."

Mr Goff said the latest Civil Defence briefing he attended this afternoon said 60,000 people were still without water supplies and another 10,000 without power. An estimated 100 water mains had been broken but already a quarter were repaired.

After passing shops where the whole front, verandahs and roofs had collapsed on the pavement, Mr Goff said the timing of the quake was "fortunate".

"If that had happened at 4.30 in the afternoon and not 4.30 in the morning, literally scores of people in those shops and pedestrians outside the shops would undoubtedly have been killed."

But the impact on the city's historic buildings was significant, he said. He saw a whole rose window, which had fallen out of the Coptic Church on Edgeware Road, but remained intact - "quite remarkable".

"But you think, a lot of historic buildings that might not be able to be repaired and this is a city that prided itself on the preservation of its history."

He said people were yet to see how extensive the underlying damage was, but every contractor in Christchurch was out trying to restore services to people.

"This won't take days or weeks, it will take months to restore everything to where it was.

"But I think we celebrate the fortunate side of it, we pull together as a country in support of the community in Christchurch and Canterbury and we know that we are in a country that at any time there might be an earthquake in anyplace, so we treat it as a learning experience and do what we can to help out."