LEAD: Christmas Day services outdoors as Christchurch keeps shaking

Dec 25, 2011, 4:56 GMT

Wellington - Christchurch's faithful attended Christmas Day services outdoors due to the risk of their churches collapsing as the city continued to shake with a series of minor tremors.

Seismologists recorded 16 pre-dawn tremors, as strong as magnitude-4.1. All were centred within 10-20 kilometres of the city, which has been devastated by a series of quakes since September 2010.

Churches held services outdoors because officials said engineers had not had a chance to check building safety since a wave of quakes hit the city Friday.

About 650 people turned up for the City Mission charity's annual lunch for the homeless and lonely. It was held at a school after the mission's headquarters was closed after the first big quake Friday.

Mayor Bob Parker said, 'It has been a hellish year,' but there was determination to not allow the quakes to ruin Christmas.

He said reports on hillside suburbs, where rocks tumbled onto roads Friday, had confirmed some areas were not safe.

The latest quakes caused no deaths. A magnitude-6.3 quake in February killed 181 and devastated the commercial centre, forcing some suburbs to be abandoned because liquefaction turned the ground into a sea of mud.

Groups of student and farmer volunteers planned to help residents clean up homes and streets of mud and silt tossed up since Friday.

As Christmas marked the start of the summer holiday for most New Zealanders, authorities declared Christchurch's Avon River, city beaches and estuaries out of bounds for at least three days because of sewage contamination.