Little lives lost among the rubble

NewstalkZB said baby Jayden died when a television fell on him during the 6.3 magnitude shake. His grandmother Gabrielle said rescuers - including a doctor and a nurse - could not revive him.

Across town, The Press said a mum died with her baby in her arms in Christchurch's Cashel St Mall. Rescuers reportedly took the child away. It was not known how badly the baby was hurt, the site said.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard said this morning that a long-term Australian resident of New Zealand origin appeared to have died in the earthquake.

Details of the man's death were sketchy, she said, adding that grave fears were held for four other Australians. 

Tom Brittenden, 25, was helping fix Cafe Blur when the earthquake hit.

Mr Brittenden told The Press it looked as if the woman with the baby had run out of a store in panic and been hit by falling debris. "We tried to pull these big bricks off [them] .... She was gone."

Some people helping took her baby away, he said. "They just put a blanket on [the woman] because she had already gone."

Aranui High School teacher Chris Henderson hid under a doorway but the sheer force of the quake knocked him sideways. The Press said a power box that fell from the wall narrowly missed his head.

"The first big quake didn't rattle me too much - that one has absolutely scared the s... out of me. The first one was intense and long, this one was just up and down, so powerful, but really brief," he told stuff.co.nz

A student had been knocked out, the site said, but teachers could not get through to emergency services.

An emergency call centre trainer for St John, Ms McConchie was answering emergency calls while the building outside her office window crumbled, The Press said.

She said the St John workers were torn between saving themselves or staying on the line to save others.

"Our building was swaying - we could see the side of the wall tilting."

Sharnyn Haseltine told the Taranaki Daily News she was on the fourth floor of the Work and Income building in Papanui when the quake struck. Desperate to get to her two kids, aged 5 and 2, Miss Haseltine left her car in traffic and ran the last kilometre to their school. She found them safe and well, the site said.

"There was this crazy lady, in high-heel boots running flat-tack down the road with two (mobile phones) and her car keys," she said.

Firefighters rescued Kristy Clemence, 33, from the rooftop of the Pyne Gould Corporation building, which collapsed on Cambridge Terrace, The NZ Herald said.

"My desk saved me, I think. It was just probably the best thing to do. It's what you learn at school, isn't it? You just dive under your desk. So it's obviously saved my life. I jumped under my desk ... I was just thinking I need to get out to my daughter. I just need to be strong for her," Ms Clemence said.

Her one-year-old daughter, Zara, was trapped in the Pyne Gould building.

"I've got a little one-year-old daughter so I was just worried about her more than anything. She's at that age where she doesn't know what's going on, so it's lucky," she said.

Ms Clemence's mum, Valerie Clemence, said it was an "anxious" three-hour wait before she knew her daughter was alive.

Elsewhere, a backpacker's body lay in a van, crushed by a fallen building on Gloucester St, Christchurch Press said.

A woman's body lay on the side of the street covered in a towel as officials tried to save others.

An unknown number of people were on the 30m-high viewing platform of Christchurch Cathedral when it collapsed, the dean told The Press.

Two people were pulled alive from the rubble of the building but others are feared dead, the site said.

"We got what people we could but we don't know what's under the rubble. There was so much dust in the building you couldn't see," Dean Peter Beck said.

Superintendent Russell Gibson said bodies still littered the streets of New Zealand's second city and the death toll was set to rise significantly.

Meanwhile, Christchurch Hospital is expecting an increase in women going into premature labour as a result of the earthquake.

There was a dramatic rise in babies born after the 7.1 magnitude earthquake last September.

A nurse told NZPA that she had gone into work to help out on her day off because "last time everyone went into labour and it's happening again".