Fears quake death toll could hit 240
Updated
Flowers left in a crushed car pay tribute to a quake victim near Christchurch (AAP: Tracey Nearmy)
The number of dead and missing in the Christchurch earthquake disaster is around 240, according to New Zealand's civil defence department, raising a previous estimate of more than 200.
The department says approximately 240 people are unaccounted for and the figure will include many, if not all, of the fatalities.
The official death toll from the earthquake stood at 154 this morning but bodies are still being found in the rubble of some buildings.
The news comes as New Zealand prepares to hold two minutes' silence in memory of the lives lost in the Christchurch earthquake.
The silence at 12:51pm (local time) will mark one week since the 6.3-magnitude quake devastated New Zealand's second largest city.
New Zealand prime minister John Key has announced an inquiry into why some of the city's biggest buildings were declared safe after September's earthquake, only to collapse last week.
As exhausted emergency crews with sniffer dogs and sensitive listening devices combed through the wreckage, one rescuer admitted hope was all but gone.
"It is probably highly unlikely that we will encounter live victims within collapsed structures," the fire service's rescue operation manager, Jim Stuart-Black, said.
No survivors have been found since a woman was pulled from a collapsed office building last Wednesday, a day after the quake hit.
The scarred city also faced new dangers as violent aftershocks created treacherous conditions for emergency crews and cracks opened in a cliff overlooking suburban streets, forcing more residents to flee their homes.
In one small piece of good news, officials said a windstorm with forecast gales of up to 130 kilometres per hour was not expected to be as serious as first thought, but could disrupt the recovery effort today.
Hundreds of weeping mourners yesterday gathered in the broken city for the first funeral of a quake victim, a five-month-old baby boy called Baxtor Gowland, who was born just after the 7.0 quake last September.
-ABC/AFP
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