The City of Christchurch, New Zealand was struck by a 7.1magnitude earthquake on the early morning of Saturday, September 4, 2010. No tsunami alert was reported. The country's army troops were on standby to assist victims and disaster recovery operation. New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key, flew to the affected area to inspect and assess the situation of the damaged city. The Prime Minister said that the full assessment of the damages would possibly take months to know the severity of damages. Based from his assessment on what he saw in the area, it could cost at least 2 billion New Zealand dollars or US$1.4 billion for reconstruction. "An absolute miracle that no one died," Prime Minister John Key said. Two were seriously injured from this quake and thousands of local residents were awakened after being shaken at 4:35 a.m. of that Saturday. There were people trapped inside the damaged buildings but fortunately none were reported dead from the rubble of the damaged buildings. "We're all feeling scared--we've just had some significant aftershocks," a survivor told TV One News. "Tonight we're just people in the face of a massive natural disaster, trying to help each other and we're grateful we haven't lost a life." GNS Science reported 29 aftershocks within the 14 hours after the quake, with strength from magnitude 3.7 to 5.4.  _ . The country experiences more than 14,000 earthquakes a year--but only about 150 are felt by people. "Many buildings here were built with earthquake protection measure. However, in most cities in developing countries, people build how they want to and there're no building controls to force them to build to a higher standard that's safe," Andrew Charleson, an architecture professor at Victoria University of Wellington told CNN. How many people were killed in the New Zealand earthquake on September 4, 2010?
250,000. 29. 2. 0.