THE DEATH TOLL from yesterday’s earthquake in Christchurch currently stands at 75 but 300 people are still missing with some feared dead.

The Prime Minister John Key has declared a national state of emergency and the city has effectively shut down because of the extent of the damage.

The New Zealand Herald says that more than 100 people may have been lost in the Canterbury TV building alone, the collapse of which police say is “unsurvivable”.

The paper also reports that 80 per cent of the city is without water with authorities urging people to stay at home and only travel if essential to do so.

Some extraordinary tales have emerged from the devastation with one woman rescued from the wreckage of an office block more than 25 hours after the quake struck.

Ann Bodkin was lying under her desk in a building that had sustained “enormous” damage, according Australia Network News but rescuers managed to pull her from the building.

The Australian Associated Press tells of another woman pulled from the same building. Anne Vos had phoned her son to say she might not survive but was later rescued.

The authorities in the city have imposed a night time curfew in the worst affected areas according to the BBC.

Christchurch Cathedral lost its spire and a section of roof with the ministry of civil defence saying that 22 who had been in the cathedral were missing.

The magnitude 6.3 quake struck at around lunchtime on Tuesday when the South Island city of Christchurch would have been at its busiest.

The damage is said to be far worse than the 7.1 magnitude quake that struck last September which left no fatalities.

The last fatal earthquake was on South Island’s western coast in 1968 which killed three people. In 1931 an earthquake in Hawke’s Bay on the North Island killed 256 people.