I must admit I was a bit shocked at the attitude of Operations Commander Dave Lawry. How could he say that he was "100 per cent" certain everyone in the Canterbury Televion building was dead. Is he clairvoyant? We've seen people trapped under rubble in earthquakes who have come out alive weeks after the event. The Japanese weren't buying it either, they've got 50 people under there, many of them students. Their families began arriving in Christchurch yesterday along with 67 experienced Japanese emergency workers who assumed control of the building.
But it doesn't look promising - no one knows for sure how many people were in the building when it collapsed and yesterday 23 bodies were retrieved, some of them Japanese students. It is understood the students were on the bottom floor of the building when it collapsed, and a rescue worker said it was obvious those on the bottom floor were crushed before they could even try to escape. "It's true, they had no chance," he said.
Last night, Christchurch police superintendent Dave Cliff said authorities had not given up on finding anyone alive at the CTV building, rather they had been forced to prioritise the sites where it was most likely that people could have survived.
But we've got to be sure.
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