10 people injured, national dollar drops
Four months after an earthquake killed 181 people in New Zealand, 5 tremors hit the country again June 13th, destroying infrastructure, cutting power lines, and injuring 10 people in the city of Christchurch. The national dollar has dropped since the quakes, making plans to rebuild the city—New Zealand’s second largest—ever more dubious. The Reserve Bank of New Zealand is expected to keep interest rates stagnant until further notice. Weather experts anticipate that multiple aftershocks with magnitudes in the 4.0 to 5.0 ranges will strike the country in the near future. The city’s tallest building, the Grand Chancellor Hotel, has been deemed unstable and will be demolished shortly; a necessary precaution in a place prone to devastating seismic activity.