NZ team to stay in Japan for several weeks - Key

A New Zealand urban search and rescue team could be in Japan for several weeks helping in the aftermath of the country's devastating earthquake and tsunami, Prime Minister John Key says.

The team leave this morning for Narita, north of Tokyo, where they will set up in the base camp for all international search teams.

All members of the team have spent time in the past three weeks in Christchurch, which was extensively damaged by a 6.3 magnitude earthquake on February 22.

Mr Key told TVNZ's Breakfast programme it was possible another team could be sent in to replace the first one.

"We have three teams so we have the capability to refresh them," Mr Key said.

"Our people are more heavily trained in earthquakes than tsunamis, but they can obviously do both, so we'll just assess that on a case-by-case basis, but my guess is they'll be up there somewhere between two and three weeks."

A lot of thought had gone into New Zealand's search and rescue response, Mr Key said.

"Just making sure that, firstly our people weren't too burnt out, they'd been working their guts out for the past two or three weeks, that it wasn't leaving us exposed if there was another aftershock in Christchurch, all of those sort of practical issues.

"But in the end, we made the decision, look, we've got a lot of expertise, Japan are good friends of ours, they came to our assistance when we needed it and we sent them in."

Mr Key said that when the process turned to victim identification and other recovery areas, New Zealand would consider sending more specialists to Japan.

Meanwhile, Mr Key agreed Japan's double disaster, coming on top of the Christchurch earthquake and the Queensland floods, would put huge stress on the insurance industry.

However, he said it would cope and payouts to New Zealand would not be affected.

"It'll certainly put stress on the system, but of course it's a very large system with great capacity to pay."

Mr Key said there could be some impact on New Zealand's ability to fundraise internationally, but that he had full confidence in NZX chief executive Mark Weldon, who has been appointed to spearhead the Government's Christchurch Earthquake Appeal fundraising.