* Prime Minister says death toll will rise
* Survivors pulled out 24 hours after quake
* Curfew in force as some buildings teeter near collapse
* Insured losses from quake may be ${esc.dollar}12 bln - J.P. Morgan (Adds details, quotes, recasts lead)
By Adrian Bathgate
CHRISTCHURCH, Feb 23 (Reuters) - New Zealand rescue teams combed rubble for earthquake survivors late into Wednesday night, but hopes of finding more survivors in some areas was fading and the search in central Christchurch was disrupted by fears badly damaged buildings could collapse.
Police said the number of confirmed dead remained at 75, although that was expected to rise with more than 300 people still missing after Tuesday's 6.3-magnitude earthquake levelled large parts of the country's second-biggest city.
Search teams gave up hope of finding survivors in a flattened television building that was home also to a language school for foreign students, many of them Japanese, while a 26-storey hotel also teetered near collapse.
"If the Hotel Grand Chancellor falls, and three engineers say it is a significant risk, that will be dramatic, a domino effect in the central city of other unstable buildings. It will be a major disaster," police Superintendent Dave Cliff said.
To avoid more deaths and curb crime, police placed an overnight curfew on the CBD, with soldiers patrolling in armoured personnel carriers to keep people away as more aftershocks continued to rattle the dangerously unstable centre.
Rescue teams had to perform amputations to free some of the 120 survivors so far pulled from the wreckage of the tremor, which was the second to hit the historic tourist city in five months. It was New Zealand's most deadly natural disaster for 80 years, and one estimate said the damage could cost ${esc.dollar}12 billion.
Early in the afternoon a woman, Ann Bodkin, was rescued from a destroyed finance company building, having spent a day trapped under a desk. Amid cheers, Bodkin, wrapped in blankets, was put into an ambulance suffering from only cuts and scratches.
"Getting her out is just stupendous. I'm a very happy man," her husband told reporters.
But rescuers abandoned the search at the collapsed Canterbury Television building to focus on buildings more likely to still have buried survivors. Among those still unaccounted for were 10 Japanese language students at the school.
"We have had no confirmation that there is any life still present in that space. It's a finite resource. There are other areas of active rescues where we have confirmation of living people," said fire search and rescue head Jim Stuart-Black.
Cliff said as many as 100 bodies could be under the television building, while scores more could lie beneath the city's shattered cathedral and other nearby buildings.
Rescuers, he said, had largely left bodies lying in the rubble to concentrate on the search for survivors.
"There is a deep emotion there, they were touching some of the deceased and having to walk away," he said. A temporary mortuary was being set up at an army base near the city to hold bodies until they could be formally identified.
MASSIVE ECONOMIC IMPACT
Indications of the massive economic impact of the quake are starting to emerge. J.P. Morgan estimated insured losses from the disaster could be ${esc.dollar}12 billion, according to a source who had seen the research note.
When asked about possible costs, Prime minister John Key told reporters: "No one's in a position to actually assess that." He said he hoped Christchurch could still host rugby World Cup matches later this year as planned.
Key said the country could afford to rebuild Christchurch, but reinsurance risk would probably worsen.
In the city centre, roads were buckled, buildings toppled and large pools of water welled up from broken pipes and sewers.
In places, roads had collapsed into a milky, sand-coloured lake beneath the surface, the result of Christchurch's sandy foundations mixing with subterranean water under the force of the quake. Officials call it "liquefaction" of the ground.
Catastrophe modelling firm AIR Worldwide Estimates said the insurance industry faces damage claims of between NZ${esc.dollar}5 billion (${esc.dollar}3.5 billion) and NZ${esc.dollar}11.5 billion (${esc.dollar}8 billion).
Reinsurers Munich Re , Swiss Re and Hannover Re , who help insurers cover big losses, took many weeks to provide damage estimates from the September quake due to complexities of assessing structural damage to buildings.
STATE OF EMERGENCY
A national state of emergency has been declared, and soldiers patrolled Christchurch city. Police imposed a curfew from 6.30 p.m. local time in the badly hit CBD area, while around 300 extra police were called from neighbouring Australia.
It is the country's worst natural disaster since a 1931 quake in the North Island city of Napier which killed 256. Christchurch Hospital received an influx of injured residents, with broken limbs, crush injuries and lacerations.
"Some had to have their limbs amputated to get them out, and others have had amputation from the injury itself," said Mike Ardagh, head of Christchurch hospital's emergency department.
Thousands of people were facing a second night in emergency shelters in local schools, community halls and at a racecourse.
Fresh water supplies were railed into the city and distributed from schools and portable toilets set up around the city as services were disrupted. Power was still out in about 80 percent of the city.
Rescuers from the United States, Britain, Taiwan and Japan were en route to New Zealand, with the first of 148 Australian specialists already on the streets. Over 1,000 were expected to comb though shattered Christchurch buildings on Thursday.
The disaster fuelled talk that the central bank might cut interest rates in coming weeks to shore up confidence in the already-fragile national economy, but the bank did not mention monetary policy on Wednesday when it commented on the quake.
Seeing the quake as a further blow to the economy, Standard Chartered bank is revising down its 2011 GDP growth forecast for New Zealand to 1.4 percent and 2.7 percent for 2012 -- from 2.0 percent and 3.0 percent respectively, because of a double-dip in the housing market, tightening budget and sluggish local demand.
The local dollar briefly firmed against the U.S. dollar after the central bank omitted any reference to rates. It had sunk to an eight-week low on Monday on the talk of a cut.
The quake's timing was far worse than last year's tremor, which struck at night when streets were empty. Still, that first quake caused damage estimated at up to around ${esc.dollar}3.7 billion. (${esc.dollar}1 = 1.339 New Zealand Dollars) (Additional reporting by Mantik Kusjanto and Gyles Beckford in Wellington, Denny Thomas in Hong Kong and Jonathan Gould in Frankfurt; Writing by Rob Taylor and Ed Davies; Editing by)
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