They're in recovery mode now. The big problem is stabilizing the recovery area's, they are still getting aftershocks between 3 and 5. Yesterday they had a 3.3 - doesn't sound bad right? What about if it's only 1km deep!
sigh... the toll has just been revised to 123. I know it's going to hit 200.
Not to sound grim but my guesstimate after reading the first reports and seeing the first images was in the 1-200 fatalities range, given the time of day, observable damage and size of the population. It's a tragedy, but I'm thankful it seems things are now erring on the side of the best out of a very bad situation. I am worried though about the aftershocks, they're extremely shallow and the liquidification problem is very unique, so there's some bad potential there still.
Looking back to our own '94 quake, which hit pre-dawn on a government holiday and monday morning (and I would rate overall as a notch or two less in damage than the one that just hit NZ), the official final toll I think was ~35 deaths directly from the quake (6.7, and relatively deep at 10.5 miles down). It's depth, magnitude and technology at the time made us to believe it was centered in Northridge (thus its name), but after 7-days of analysis it was determined that the epicenter was actualy miles further south and more centraly located in the valley. All us locals to this day and the media at the time considered the casualties at well over 100 due to related issues (people had a heart attack during or imediatley after the quake, couldn't get transported to a hospital or medical care within an hour or more, so they passed from something that on a normal day would be survivable).
