Aftershocks rattle quake-hit New Zealand

A series of aftershocks shook New Zealand on Monday, hours after a powerful magnitude-7.8 earthquake had killed two people.

Waves up to 6 feet high were seen near Kaikoura, a popular tourism area about 50 miles from the quake’s epicenter. The town is cut off after a highway and the main rail line were buried by landslides and has three more days of water left, the New Zealand Herald reported.

The country’s air force started lifting 1,100 trapped tourists out of Kaikoura by helicopter, according to the New Zealand Herald.

“From all directions, Kaikoura has essentially been isolated,” Air Commodore Darryn Webb, the acting Commander of New Zealand’s Joint Forces, told the Associated Press. “There’s a real imperative to support the town because it can’t support itself.”

Prime Minister John Key flew by helicopter over the destruction in Kaikoura. Cars could be seen on their sides and parts of the road were impassable, the AP reported.

“It’s just utter devastation,” Key said.

The New Zealand government-funded earthquake monitor GeoNet said two separate quakes struck, and the combination of them lasted two minutes. The agency measured it as magnitude 7.5 and said it was the largest quake recorded in the country since 2009. The U.S. Geological Survey measured the quake as magnitude 7.8.

Two dead as powerful quake rocks New Zealand

The tremors that followed included one that was magnitude 6.2, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The aftershocks will continue for the next few months,  the BBC reported.

People living near the Clarence River — one of the largest on the country's South Island — were urged to move to higher ground after the river breached its banks, according to the BBC.

The geological survey said the quake was centered less than 60 miles northeast of Christchurch, the scene of a devastating earthquake in 2011 that killed at least 185 people.