Huddled together in the drizzle, 18-year-old Lizzy Manning and her brother Kent, 15, sit waiting near the building in Christchurch where their mother is trapped.
Donna Manning was a supermum, the two teenagers agreed - the building where she worked as a TV presenter was in ruins but she’d pull through.
“She’d do anything,” said 18-year-old Lizzy Manning.
Up to 100 were trapped in the Canterbury TV building in the centre of the city. But the teenagers had hope - officials had told them there were people alive in there.
But then a police officer knelt down in front of them. “I have some horrible news...” he began.
He didn’t need to finish. The teenagers collapsed in tears. Their father, realising that hope had gone, ran to his children, wrapped his arms around them and, head bowed, wept with them. No-one, they were told, could have survived. It meant that up to 100 bodies were lying in that building, their mother’s among them.
It was just one of the many agonising scenes played out in the shattered streets of Christchurch, New Zealand, on Wednesday.
Others like the Manning children had waited too for news of loved ones in the CTV building, where smoke, dust and embers rose up to an overcast sky.
There had been words of assurance early in the day - a camera had been lowered through the debris, said a fire official, and the good news was that at least 15 people were alive.
It brought hope to hundreds - because for every one of those unaccounted for - there were several family members praying for a miracle. Then came the expert’s assessment. Trapped smoke and fumes meant there was no air in there. Those inside had either died from asphyxiation or had been crushed.
Even if anyone remained alive, police and rescue workers agreed to call off the search because the building was in such a dangerous state. Inspector Dave Lawry said: “We don’t believe this site is now survivable. At a certain point I’m not going to risk my staff to search for people who I believe have no chance of survivability. That’s the end of it.
“My heart goes out to those families. We will do the very best for your people that we can.”
Added to the 75 confirmed dead, that brought the number known to have perished in the earthquake that struck Christchurch with such force on Tuesday lunchtime to around 175. With police saying that up to 300 are missing, the final toll could soar to 375.
Superintendent Russell Gibson said there were scenes of “absolute carnage” in the city centre.
“There are bodies littering the streets,” he said. “They’re trapped in cars, crushed under rubble and where they are clearly deceased our focus unfortunately at this time has turned to the living.”
One construction team, using sledgehammers and chainsaws to hack through the roof of another office block to look for survivors found nothing but horror - bodies crushed under concrete slabs and left with terrible injuries.
Many who had waited around the debris-strewn streets on the first day of the disaster in the hope of finding loved ones had dispersed on Wednesday, their hopes slowly dwindling.
On Wednesday night, with the central part of the city under curfew, rescue teams returned to the CTV centre to cautiously sift through the ruins. But this time it was not a recovery mission. It was to start the process of removing the bodies. - Daily Mail