Residents have cleared out of a central Wellington street while urgent work is carried out on a quake-damaged carpark lift which could crash down in an aftershock.

Residents have cleared out of a central Wellington street while urgent work is carried out on a quake-damaged carpark lift which could come crashing down in an aftershock.

A quake-damaged carpark lift shaft has forced the closure of a central Wellington street.

Central New Zealand has been rattled by more than 1500 aftershocks in the past week as a previously unknown section of faultline shakes out the last of its stress.

Police say they have identified three people linked to a brazen theft from a Wellington cafe. Meanwhile, work to clean up damaged buildings in Wellington continued.

Experts say the injury toll in Wellington from Sunday's quake would've been higher had it struck on a weekday, as an aftershock plague continues.

An Auckland couple are fighting to bring their sick baby home after she was born three months early on a stopover in China.

Precinct Properties NZ, with 10 Wellington office blocks worth more than $600 million, has been hammered by insurance premium rises.

More than 1000 claims have been lodged with the Earthquake Commission following the swarm of quakes centred off the Seddon coast.

Wellington Regional Council offices in Wakefield St remain closed to the public today as engineers continue to assess the building in the wake of Sunday's violent earthquake.

The small town of Seddon, the closest town to the weekend's earthquakes, is cleaning up after the damage wrought by the tremors.

The next few days will be a trying time for many in Wellington, but people are being urged to remember that children in particular need special attention at this time.

The Cook Strait earthquakes may have occurred on an unmapped fault line, seismologists believe.

Editorial: Wellington has also felt more frequent big shakes in the past few days than Christchurch did during its 16-month ordeal and Wellington's is probably not over.

Frenchman Luca Zappula feared a tsunami was on its way when Sunday's big quake hit - but he still snapped amazing pics of the slip in front of him.

Wellington's shipping and cargo port will remain in business this week, as work to clean debris caused by the big quake begins.

Wellington's earthquakes have put the spotlight back on seismic issues.

Insurance companies are refusing policies to new customers in central New Zealand after Sunday's 6.5 earthquake.

Former Christchurch resident Angela Senior and her three young daughters were in Marlborough for the school holidays when the Sunday evening quake hit.

At Wellington's post-earthquake rush-hour, its central business district was filled only with pigeons and lonely security guards.

Wellington's mayor is hopeful it will be business as normal tomorrow despite 35 buildings in the CBD found to have been externally damaged by yesterday's severe earthquake.

Scientists are deploying extra seismic instruments in Marlborough to enable more accurate measurement of the aftershocks off the coast of Seddon.

"Major journalistic fail," wrote one commenter after an American website reported yesterday's big quake was felt in Seddon -in Victoria, Australia.

Livestream of the media conference following the Wellington earthquake.