New Zealand police put the death toll at 113 late February 25. Seventy people have been found alive in the days since the 6.3-magnitude quake. More than 200 people are still thought to be missing.
The U.S. team — flown in from the Los Angeles County Fire Department — arrived in Christchurch February 24, deployed as part of the Disaster Assistance Response Team that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) keeps on standby at all times to help when catastrophe strikes anywhere in the world.
“Our [search-and-rescue] team will join forces with … personnel from New Zealand and other international teams they train with all year to assure that every place a survivor might be found is thoroughly searched,” wrote USAID press officer Rebecca Gustafson in a blog post from Christchurch.
Gustafson said members of the Los Angeles team worked in the recovery effort after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.
One of the United States’ top officials in the field of emergency management, Tim Manning, was in Christchurch at the time of the temblor, participating in a meeting on emergency management issues. Manning is the deputy administrator for protection and national preparedness at the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Manning came into the federal government with almost two decades of frontline emergency management experience as a firefighter, emergency medical technician, rescue mountaineer and hazardous materials specialist. He was on hand when the Los Angeles team arrived and was involved in its initial deployment and search operations.
Members of the U.S. Embassy staff in Wellington are also in Christchurch, helping American travelers and international students in the replacement of lost documents and evacuation.
The earthquake is rattling families well beyond New Zealand. One severely damaged building, the Canterbury Television headquarters, also housed an international education program. Officials said late February 25 that little hope remained that people might be pulled alive from the debris there, or from the Christchurch Cathedral. Japanese, Chinese and Filipino students were enrolled in the international school and are feared dead.
(This is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://www.america.gov)
