Experts: Poor construction in China quake area

Waiting for details
Many in China simply want to know why so many schools — some 7,000 classrooms altogether — collapsed so easily and who is to blame.

"This was absolutely a construction problem. There have been no answers. We're just waiting for information," said Li Shandin, whose 16-year-old daughter died at the Beichuan school. "If we get no information, we have to gather together to sue."

Parents have held angry public memorials at other collapsed schools, but the Beichuan site remained peaceful.

"Because this place was hit so hard, many parents are gone, too," said Chen Datang, a volunteer who was helping parents retrieve their children's belongings from the rubble.

Li, an expert at the China Academy of Building Research who specializes in earthquake prevention, said he drafted 1995 guidelines for urban planning that Chengdu, Sichuan's provincial capital, followed well. As a result, he said, the city survived the quake relatively well — some 1,000 dead out of 10 million people — while poorer areas with less to invest suffered.

Qi Ji, vice minister of housing and urban-rural development, denied a disproportionate number of classrooms had collapsed, saying that "other public buildings and homes also collapsed." But he acknowledged that tougher building standards should be used during reconstruction.

Seismologists have said for years that the area, where the Sichuan plain meets the foothills of the Tibetan highlands, was due for a major quake. Pressure had been rising along the fault since a catastrophic quake in 1933.

At a late April meeting of the China Geophysics Association, geologists had discussed the likelihood of a magnitude 6 or 7 earthquake in the region in the coming years, Li Shihui, a geophysicist with the China Academy of Sciences, wrote on his blog last month.

Qi acknowledged that "earthquake-resistance standards were not high" in the stricken area, even though it is well known that seismic activity was possible. Still, he said, simply knowing there was a possibility of a quake did not mean authorities could take action.

"We can only take such information as reference," he said.

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