Christchurch city , is the biggest city in New Zealand’s South Island, but he was extensively damaged early Saturday by a massive 7.4-magnitude earthquake that flattened buildings, ripped up roads and cut power, water and sewage connections.

The seismologists said the earthquake, which was centered about 19 miles west of the city, was one of the biggest to hit a population center in one of the world’s most earthquake-prone countries in the last century.They also added that the earthquake caused extensive damage because it was centered only 6 miles underground. They revised an earlier estimate that it was 20.5 miles deep.

The officials said only two serious injuries were reported and omass casualties were avoided because the quake struck at 4.35 am when most people were still asleep.But there was reports of serious damage at the port of Lyttelton, 7 miles from the city centre, but no tsunami warning was issued.Aftershocks continued to shake the city of nearly 400,000, police closed the central business district, where roads were blocked by the fallen facades of office blocks, because of the threat of further collapses.

All the residents in the suburbs, many still in pajamas, reportedly walked the streets in a daze, inspecting devastated houses that looked as though they had been bombed.The electric power was cut to three-quarters of the city and the entire Canterbury province, where more than 550,000 people live in mainly rural areas.All the emergency services were flooded with calls and police urged residents not to use mobile phones and to stay indoors.The earthquake was felt hundreds of miles away and civil defense officials activated the national crisis management centre at parliament in the capital, Wellington.The International Airport of Christchurch city was closed and the South Island rail network was shut down pending inspections for damage.The hits of the earthquake was felt widley across the South Island and in Wellington, at the southern tip of the North Island.

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