FOR 42 New Zealand students in Oxford, yesterday morning brought the worst déjà vu of their lives.

When Christchurch was hit by a huge earthquake in February, killing 181 people and destroying much of the city centre, the group were offered placements at Oxford University to continue their studies as the city recovered.

Back home, librarians had just finished putting thousands of books back on the shelves of the University of Canterbury library when the city was struck again by two earthquakes, measuring 5.5 and 6.0 in magnitude.

Some 12,000 miles from home, the students woke up in Oxford to learn their city had been plunged into fresh trauma.

They spent the morning contacting family and friends through Facebook and Skype, making sure they were safe.

Julie Abbari, 40, left sons Ali, 12, and Youssef, 10, at home in New Zealand to come to Oxford to study geography.

She said: “My housemate told me at breakfast that there had been another big earthquake.

“I did not know about it. I got online and my boys had emailed me, so I knew that they were fine.

“One of them said there was actually a tremor happening as he was emailing.”

The news brought back memories of the destruction caused in February.

Lucy-Jane Walsh, 21, said she still had moments of panic when trucks rumbled past her flat, because it brought back flashes from the day the earthquake struck.

She said: “I was at university, and had just sat down to do my first study of the year.

“My memories are all in snapshots.

“I just remember my friend pulling me under the table. All the other students were under the table looking really scared.

“It felt the ground was doing a figure-of-eight movement.”

Claire Brighton, 23, said she remembered feeling sick as she realised she did not know who was safe.

She said: “You suddenly realise this could be your day.

“We were all over the place. I was sending hundreds of text messages, but they were not going through.

Patricia Allan, 73, an Anglican priest, worked at Christchuch Cathedral, the collapse of which became the symbol of the devastation wreaked by February’s earthquake.

Now fresh damage has been caused to it by the latest tremors.

She was in Qatar when the February earthquake struck, and spent a desperate 24 hours trying to contact her children and grandchildren.

Now studying anthropology as a mature student, she said: “This time around that sense has come back, not in the head, but almost as a bodily remembrance.

“I still don’t think it has hit properly yet.”

The students are due to return home to Christchurch in July, after two-and-a-half months in Oxford.