Chabad crushed in earthquake
AN Israeli backpacker is among the dead, and other Israeli travellers are injured, after a devastating earthquake rocked Christchurch, on New Zealand’s South Island, this week.
AN Israeli backpacker is among the dead, and other Israeli travellers are injured, after a devastating earthquake rocked Christchurch, on New Zealand’s South Island, this week.
As of Wednesday afternoon, at least 75 people were reported dead and hundreds more trapped following the 6.3 magnitude earthquake that struck the city at lunchtime on Tuesday.
While there was said to be “fixable” damage to the Christchurch Hebrew Congregation, members of the small local Jewish community have escaped with minimal injuries.
The local Chabad House, catering to the hundreds of Israelis who pass through the South Island’s largest city, was reduced to rubble, but emissary Rabbi Shmuel Friedman said congregants were safe.
“I was in the Chabad House with an Israeli traveller [when the earthquake occurred]. It was a miracle that it was just the two of us there. All of a sudden, everything started coming down on us.
The walls, the ceiling, there was lots of dust and noise and everything was shaking around us,” he told The AJN. “We knew we had to try to get out. We followed our intuition and I’m not sure how, but we got out.”
Rabbi Friedman, a New Yorker who has been in New Zealand for a few months, said many Israelis he knew of had used their army experience to help rescue efforts.
“They were pulling people out of buildings and helping with evacuations,” he said. “There was a lot of panic, a lot of trauma. Some injuries that were small, others that were much worse. It was not a pleasant experience.”
President of the New Zealand Jewish Council Stephen Goodman said that while phone calls between the two islands were being kept to a minimum, recent reports from Canterbury Hebrew Congregation president Bettina Wallace confirmed that “most congregants have survived the disaster relatively well”. Wallace had added that “the lack of landline communication is hampering contacting all members”.
Hundreds of Israelis were evacuated to a public park and efforts were underway to move them by plane to Auckland and Wellington.
While his identity is yet to be released, the Israeli killed in the quake was believed to have been travelling with friends in a car when a building collapsed on top of them.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry thanked its New Zealand counterpart for the efficiency with which the authorities assisted the Israeli Embassy in locating Israelis and offered assistance with rescue efforts, food and medicine.
Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman has offered assistance to New Zealand, but the offer has not yet been taken up by the Kiwis.
Dalia Sable
comments