MANILA, Philippines — A team of miners in the Philippines is volunteering to help dig out the Filipinos still trapped in a building in Christchurch, New Zealand, that collapsed during the 6.3-magnitude earthquake last Tuesday.

The team from the Philippine Mine Safety and Environment Association (PMSEA) said it is ready to be sent to Christchurch anytime to help save the 10 Filipinos buried in the rubbles of the Canterbury Television (CTV) building.

PMSEA President Louie Sarmiento said he has coordinated with the National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council (NDRRMC), and communicated to New Zealand Ambassador to Manila Andrew Matheson its offer to assist in the rescue effort.

“We appeal and hope that our team be sent to New Zealand right away, without any delay,” Sarmiento said.

He pointed out that Filipino miners are experts in calamity and disaster rescue. They had saved many lives during the 1990 earthquake in Baguio City and four trapped individuals from the collapsed Repador Building in Real, Quezon, in 2004 after a series of typhoons and landslides hit the area.

He said the miners also took part in the rescue and recovery efforts during the Leyte landslides in December 2003 and February 2006.

In Christchurch itself, an alliance of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) has criticized the Philippine government for what it said was its slow response to the plight of Filipinos affected by the earthquake.

“Filipinos affected by the earthquake in New Zealand are in the dark with no available hotline available for distressed Filipinos or for enquiries of relatives and friends. Affected families are not feeling the presence and support of the Philippine government where it is badly needed,” Migrante Aotearoa Spokesperson George Misa said.

“We are dismayed that the embassy is too slow and reactive. We can’t even find information on the situation of Filipinos at the Philippine embassy website,” Misa said.

But according to Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Spokesperson Ed Malaya, a team sent by the Philippine embassy in Wellington arrived in Christchurch last Wednesday, or two days after the magnitude 6.3 tremor struck.

The team, led by Charge d’ Affaires (CDA) Giovanni Palec, checked on the condition of the Filipino community and coordinated with local authorities regarding the status of Filipinos who were still missing, Malaya said.

There are 40,000 Filipinos living in New Zealand, with about 3,000 in Christchurch, he said.

The DFA, citing information relayed by the embassy in Wellington, reported on Friday that Filipinas Rita Estrella and Hayley Concepcion, who were reported missing, were safe.

Some 14 Filipinos were reported missing, many of them believed trapped under the rubble of the CTV building.

Fresh aftershocks Saturday sent masonry tumbling among rescuers in the quake zone and a cat sparked false alarms of a possible survivor, as the disaster’s death toll rose to 145.

Grim assessments emerged for the fate of the central business district in devastated Christchurch, with engineers and planners saying it will be unusable for months and that about a third of the buildings must be destroyed and rebuilt.

On the outer edge of the district, Brent Smith watched in tears as workers demolished his 1850s-era house, where he had run a bed and breakfast and where antique jugs and a $6,000 Victorian bed were reduced to shards and firewood. His three daughters hugged him, also weeping.

Prime Minister John Key, who spent some of the afternoon speaking to families that lost loved ones in the disaster, called on all New Zealanders to hold two minutes of silence next Tuesday to remember victims and the ordeal of the survivors.

“This may be New Zealand’s single-most tragic event,” Key said.

Christchurch Mayor Bob Parker assured relatives of the missing – including people from several countries who have converged on the New Zealand city of 350,000 – that every effort was being made to locate any remaining survivors of Tuesday’s quake.

No one was found alive overnight as a multinational team of more than 600 rescuers continued scouring the city’s central business district, although a paramedic reported hearing voices in one destroyed building early Saturday, Police Superintendent Russel Gibson said.

“We mobilized a significant number of people and sent a dog in again – and a cat jumped out,” Gibson said, adding that a rescue team removed “a significant amount of rubble to be 100 percent” certain that no person was trapped inside.

Police have said up to 120 bodies may be entombed in the ruins of the CTV building alone, where dozens of foreign students from an international school were believed trapped.

Still, Gibson said rescuers weren’t completely ruling out good news.

The King’s Education language school released a list of missing people presumed in the building: nine teachers and 51 students – 26 Japanese, 14 Chinese, six Filipinos, three Thais, one South Korean, and one Czech. An additional 20 students were listed with “status unknown.”

Police Superintendent David Cliff said more than 200 people remain missing.