TWO friends from Oxford are trapped in New Zealand after a devastating earthquake which killed two people and destroyed the town they were staying in.

Bethan Morris and Connie Kelly, from Marston, thought they were going to die when the disaster struck the country in the middle of Monday night.

Now they are trapped in the most devastated town hoping they will be able to catch a helicopter out to make their flights out of Auckland this weekend.

The former Cherwell School pupils were staying in a backpackers hostel Kaikoura, practically at the epicentre of the quake when it hit just after midnight New Zealand time – lunchtime in the UK on Monday.

The day also happened to be Bethan Morris's 23rd birthday.

Miss Morris's father Alistair Morris spoke to his daughter on the phone yesterday and said the girls had been terrified.

He told the Oxford Mail: "They were scared witless – absolutely terrified: the initial quake went on for minutes and the whole building was shaking.

"Luckily the building is constructed of wood so it was able to bend and shake, but they literally thought they were going to die. Everyone was screaming and crying."

Mr Morris said both the girls were unhurt but 'extremely shaken up'.

Almost as soon as the quake had finished, an air raid siren went out warning the whole town that a tsunami was imminent.

Mr Morris said the girls and everyone else in Kaikoura who could run fled to high ground as waves two metres high crashed against the shore.

As the entire country began to recover from the shock, the damage became clear – including the fact that the only two roads out of Kaikoura had been destroyed.

Mr Morris said the northern road had been buried beneath a massive avalanche and the southern road had been torn and crumpled out of shape, "as if it was made of paper".

All fresh water supplies to the town have been cut off and the only building with electricity is the hospital, where the girls went with hundreds of others to start contacting friends and relatives.

The New Zealand Government will send helicopters today to carry people away, but as each helicopter can only carry 18 people – and Kaikoura has a population of 3,600 without tourists – that would take days or weeks.

Mr Morris also said the New Zealand navy was planning to send a massive ship to the town on Wednesday to rescue people, but the weather forecast is currently making it uncertain whether conditions will be safe enough for people to board.

Even if they are, that ship will not be able to take the thousands in the town.

The girls, who both graduated from university last year, have been in New Zealand for a month, and were planning to flight out on the next stage of their travels this weekend.

Miss Morris, who studied psychology at Plymouth University, was planning to return home to Marston before Christmas.

Mr Morris, 55, who used to work in Oxford University's parks department, has raised his daughter and her younger brother Callum on his own since their mother Michele died from cancer when Miss Morris was just six.

Miss Morris appeared in the Oxford Mail in 2011 when she joined the Race for Life at Oxford University Parks for Cancer Research UK, and again the following year when she aced her A-Levels at Cherwell.

She moved back home, and the trip to New Zealand was supposed to be a last adventure before embarking on a career.