QUSHAN TOWN, China — Two things still haunt Wang Bin a year after an earthquake decimated his village: the death of his teenage son and a purchase he made more than a decade earlier.
He bought the cartful of bricks and two tons of cement in 1995 from a contractor who said they were extras from a school construction project.
After the quake devastated Sichuan province last May 12, Wang and other parents say the contractor sold them the material for personal profit. They contend that steel reinforcement rods, bricks and pillars they found in the rubble show that he skimped or used shoddy replacements. Hundreds of students, including Wang’s son, died when the school collapsed, the destruction a stark contrast to the intact buildings close by.
The collapse of 7,000 classrooms and the deaths of so many children have touched a nerve nationwide, raising questions about corruption and mismanagement.
He Xiaogang, an engineering expert from Tsinghua University who was on a team of government investigators that visited quake sites, said the sheer power of the earthquake is to blame for the flattened schools.
But an assessment by American engineering experts who visited the quake site last August with Chinese counterparts said many of the schools were reportedly unreinforced structures — brick or block walls without steel — that had been outlawed after another massive earthquake near Beijing in 1976.
Authorities have clamped down on information about the school-related deaths and have never released a death toll from the schools. Parents who have sought information have been intimidated or detained.
by the associated press
He bought the cartful of bricks and two tons of cement in 1995 from a contractor who said they were extras from a school construction project.
After the quake devastated Sichuan province last May 12, Wang and other parents say the contractor sold them the material for personal profit. They contend that steel reinforcement rods, bricks and pillars they found in the rubble show that he skimped or used shoddy replacements. Hundreds of students, including Wang’s son, died when the school collapsed, the destruction a stark contrast to the intact buildings close by.
The collapse of 7,000 classrooms and the deaths of so many children have touched a nerve nationwide, raising questions about corruption and mismanagement.
He Xiaogang, an engineering expert from Tsinghua University who was on a team of government investigators that visited quake sites, said the sheer power of the earthquake is to blame for the flattened schools.
But an assessment by American engineering experts who visited the quake site last August with Chinese counterparts said many of the schools were reportedly unreinforced structures — brick or block walls without steel — that had been outlawed after another massive earthquake near Beijing in 1976.
Authorities have clamped down on information about the school-related deaths and have never released a death toll from the schools. Parents who have sought information have been intimidated or detained.
by the associated press
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