John Key surveys a Kaiapoi store badly damaged by the earthquake. Photo / Mark Mitchell
Have you been affected by the earthquake?
Send us your photos and video.
Waimakariri residents are being warned of bogus insurance agents casing homes hit by Saturday's 7.1-magnitude earthquake.
Waimakariri District Council chief executive Jim Palmer said people should ask for identification from people claiming they worked for an insurance company.
He said curfews were in place in the Kaiapoi and Pines Beach
area between 7pm and 7am and would continue "indefinitely".
Insurance Council CEO Chris Ryan said bogus insurance agents were not a "large problem" but burglars seemed to pose as agents every time there was a national disaster.
He said he had warned authorities after hearing that burglars were posing as insurance agents to get inside people's homes.
"There are a lot of assessors on the ground from other parts of the country who are not familiar to the area, so don't be concerned if they look lost," Mr Ryan said.
He said agents had been flown in from Auckland, Nelson, Dunedin and even Australia.
"They're all goodies. It's all hands to the pump," Mr Ryan said.
He said the number of legitimate insurance agents on the ground in Canterbury now numbered in the "high hundreds" and there were more on the way.
He also encouraged people to ask for identification from people claiming to be insurance agents.
AMI Chief Executive John Balmforth works in Christchurch and said his company's assessors all had permission from the police to be in the Waimakariri area.
He said his people on the ground had not come across fake insurance agents.
Earthquake Commission (EQC) insurance manager Lance Dixon said the commission had 36 people on the ground in Christchurch and a further 20 or so would arrive in the coming days.
He said everyone from the Commission would have an EQC high-visibility vest or black vest on and will be carrying documentation with the EQC letterhead.
"We are still in the process of getting name tags," Mr Dixon said.
Police spokeswoman Kim Perks reiterated advice from the insurance industry to ask everyone claiming they are an insurance agent for valid identification.
* 50,000 claims lodged with private insurance companies so far
* 39,579 claims have been lodged with the Earthquake Commission, 2329 from Waimakariri.
