Valuables emerge from wreckage

When he stood in front of his ruined jewellers on Saturday morning, Roger Kelso did not expect he would be able to retrieve his stock intact.

"I didn't think we had any chance at all of getting anything out but we've got our most expensive jewellery out. We couldn't get our really good fittings out, but they're replaceable."

The restaurant above his Westende Jewellers store, on the corner of Worcester and Manchester Sts in central Christchurch, crumbled down on to the footpath, blocking access and raising fears about what state the store, and its expensive stock, would be left in.

But when Mr Kelso and his supporters managed to get in, after an urban search and rescue team made sure the second floor was secure, they found remarkably little damage and had no trouble opening the safe.

"There's no damage in the shop from above - not a piece of damage. The floor was still intact between us and the second floor."

Mr Kelso said he did not have time to worry about the threat posed by aftershocks but also did not have to convince anyone to help him.

"In Christchurch, everyone mucks in and helps and you only have to make a phone call. I could have had another dozen if I wanted them."

When he first saw the damage on Saturday he was "utterly devastated" but he said yesterday "it would have been worse if they had pulled someone from under that rubble".

Westende Jewellers had been open more than 30 years and Mr Kelso said he hoped to reopen one day. But the first step yesterday was securing the stock, with an estimated value of more than $500,000.

"We're putting it into safe deposit in the bank and from there we'll have to sort out what we're going to do."