A FORMER Court Fields Community School, Wellington student has told how he was caught in the devastating earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, which may have claimed the lives of around 200 people.

Dan Marrow, 38, who moved to Christchurch, on New Zealand's South Island, seven years ago while working for Greenpeace, held onto his son while they watched the road buckle and heave as the magnitude 6.3 earthquake ripped through the city at lunchtime on Tuesday, February 22.

Dan, who is three weeks away from qualifying to be a teacher and lives in New Brighton, a suburb of Christchurch, with wife Veda, son Rama and step son Sachin, and daughter Shanty, said: "It was surreal."

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