Christchurch mayor Bob Parker doesn't pull any punches in a personal account of the earthquakes that rocked his city.

A search and rescue expert used Oklahoma City bombing terrorist attack rescue techniques to take control of the CTV Building collapse site, an inquest heard today.

A shock jump in the unemployment rate to 7.3 per cent would have been worse without jobs being generated from the Christchurch rebuild.

A Fire Service has disagreed strongly with some earlier witnesses at the CTV inquest that there was confusion over leadership on February 22 last year.

A coroner's inquest today heard from a senior search and rescue expert who described the "chaos" at the disaster site when he arrived two hours after the building's collapse.

The inquest into the CTV deaths has heard of frustrations caused by delays and chaos in the hours after the catastrophe.

The green-zoning of a final eight residential properties in the Port Hills of Christchurch marks the end of the zoning process in Canterbury.

A magnitude 4.9 earthquake has shaken the eastern Bay of Plenty early this morning, GeoNet reports.

A 4.0 magnitude earthquake was recorded 20 km north-east of Waipukurau this morning at a depth of 34km.

More harrowing testimony is expected as a coroner's inquest into the deaths of eight CTV building victims continues today.

Mark Quigley asks: Do scientists have a right to be wrong? Does state-of-the-art science really enable us to speak confidentially about "low-probability" events?

Fire chiefs failed to cope with the February 22 earthquake response, according to a scathing report out today which criticised them for being disorganised.

The Canterbury earthquakes were a chance for many to break out of their mundane existences, a researcher has found.