Two people were killed and dozens injured by the magnitude 7.8 quake - two nearly simultaneous tremors that ruptured faultlines across the top of the ruggedly beautiful South Island.

Evacuees formerly stranded in the earthquake-affected town of Kaikoura stand alongside the helicopter that brought them to the town of Woodend, near Christchurch, New Zealand November 16, 2016.

The timing of the quake - shortly after midnight on Sunday - combined with the epicenter being in a sparsely populated region prevented a higher toll, authorities said.

STRUCTURAL DAMAGE

In Wellington, as many as 60 buildings suffered structural damage, including a multi-storey building near the parliament complex that would have to be taken down, engineers said.

Wellington is bisected by several fault lines, and large areas of its business district are built on reclaimed land, raising questions about building practices in the capital despite some of the world's strictest codes.

"There are some sites that are really not suitable for certain types of structures. For example, I would seriously question putting a hospital or essential services on reclaimed land," Paul Campbell, the president of the New Zealand Structural Engineering Society, told Radio New Zealand.

The force of the tremor was most evident in the upper South Island, where parts of the coast moved meters.

A team of volunteers rescued thousands of abalone, a large shellfish known locally as paua, that had been left high and dry.

A popular New Zealand fur seal colony near Kaikoura, where pups could often be seeing playing in a waterfall in a nearby stream, was destroyed by a landslide, Department of Conversation officials said.

Civil Defense evacuated some residents near the Hapuku and Ure Rivers, further north, where landslides from the earthquakes had blocked the rivers.

"There is a 150m high dam caused by the earthquakes which could rapidly fail, spilling water and debris from the new 'lake' over (or through) the dam due to heavy rain and building pressure," Civil Defence Canterbury said on its Facebook page.

Storms lashed the region on Thursday and seismologists were still recording hundreds of aftershocks - some 2,000 have rattled the region since the initial shock.

Government body Geonet Science estimated an almost one-in-three chance of another 7-7.8 magnitude quake hitting the region within the next 30 days.

($1 = 1.4110 New Zealand dollars)

Source: Reuters