China quake - A Human Tragedy
China - Modern apartment buildings and schools crumbled, smoothly paved highways buckled and bridges collapsed — their flimsy construction no match for the awesome forces of nature.
As the death toll soars from the powerful earthquake that ravaged central China’s Sichuan province, the scale of the devastation is raising questions about the quality of China’s recent construction boom.
“This building is just a piece of junk,” one newly homeless resident of Dujiangyan yelled Wednesday, her body quivering with rage. Her family salvaged clothing and mementos from their wrecked apartment, built when their older home was razed 10 years ago.
“The government tricked us. It told us this building was well constructed. But look at the homes all around us, they’re still standing,” said the woman, who would give only her surname, Chen.
Three decades of high-paced growth have remade China, with stunning showcase metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai as well as formerly tiny county towns that are now small cities with office towers and multistory apartment buildings. But as the widespread devastation from Monday’s magnitude-7.9 quake shows, the pell-mell pace has led some builders to cut corners, especially in outlying areas largely populated by the very young and the very old.
“This new economy in China is not going up safely, it’s going up fast, and the two don’t go together,” said Roger Bilham, a professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “You look at the buildings that fell and they should not have fallen,” he said. “This is a story that has been repeated throughout the developing nations.”
New buildings in Beijing — like the signature “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium for this August’s Olympics — are built to exacting codes to withstand earthquakes. But “anti-earthquake standards are not as strict in places like Sichuan as in Shanghai,” said Ren Bing, an architectural designer at Hong Kong-based China Construction International Co.
Monday’s temblor flattened smaller towns in the disaster zone like Yingxiu, where 7,700 people were reported to have died according to aerial footage shown on state-run China Central Television. A hilltop view of Beichuan, another hard-hit town, showed entire blocks of apartment buildings that seemingly disintegrated.
In Dujiangyan city, where rescuers saved a woman eight months pregnant who was trapped for 50 hours under a collapsed apartment building, there was little evidence of steel reinforcement bars in the concrete rubble.
Other infrastructure old and new suffered as well. Nearly 400 dams, most of them small, were damaged across Sichuan, the government’s economic planning agency said on its Web site. One of the two bigger ones, Zipingpu, had cracks four inches across its top; and though the government said the dam was safe, its reservoir was drained.
China is jolted by thousands of earthquakes every year, at least several of them major ones that cause significant damage and loss of life. Since the 1976 quake in Tangshan near Beijing killed at least 240,000 people, the communist government has tried to improve building standards.
“China has been taking earthquake safety very seriously in the past 10 to 20 years,” said Susan Tubbesing, head of the California-based Earthquake Engineering Research Institute. “From what I understand, the codes China has adopted in the past 20 years have been good, solid, seismic codes.”
Enforcement, however, varies. The building boom that has underpinned much of the stunning growth has also been an invitation for corruption, with officials and developers colluding. Profit margins are thinner on smaller projects in less prosperous places, encouraging developers to cut corners.
In larger cities like Shanghai, authorities generally enforce regulations. But that isn’t always true in smaller cities. And in rural areas, it’s out of the question, says Andrew Smeall, an associate at Asia Society’s Center on U.S.-China Relations in New York.
“The cost of trying to go back and make sure everything is built to code would be prohibitive,” he said.
It wasn’t just newer buildings that collapsed.
Sichuan, like many parts of China, is dotted with factories left over from Maoist policies of building up industries far from the coasts for strategic reasons.
In Hanwang, the town’s mostly older buildings were flattened or severely damaged by the quake. A newer five-story clock tower, its face stopped at 2:27 — the time the earthquake struck — remained eerily intact.
Duration : 0:1:59
曲解问题的 CNN
曲解问题的 CNN
who are niggers??
who are niggers??
OK now when …
OK now when hurrican Katrina came and wiped out new orleans and all those welfareing poor sob (niggers) were out in the cold they bitched and complained even though they were at least geting some kind of shelter and fema gave them money to make a new life these people dont have that option and are not complaining as half os much as those lazy niggers
Rangzenboy, u …
Rangzenboy, u 2…
muzafuka…
loveloveyongjoon
…
loveloveyongjoon
u aren’t mankind….u sob…..
yo, punk muzafuka.. …
yo, punk muzafuka…..
curse u to death…and your soul burning in the infernal fire of rage…
whatever you say, …
whatever you say, china was punished by god.
google up? that’s what you did, asshole.
now i’m really sure you are poor sick bastard.
don’t waste your time on youtube, and go with your mom.
Hahaha! Now I’m …
Hahaha! Now I’m sure you’re not an engineer. Thank God. No sensible engineer would be caught dead using an immature and idiotic argument as that. Come back with a sensible argument. Maybe then you’ll have more credibility. (You might want to google up the definitions of “sensible” and “credible” while you’re at it. You know, to expand on your vocabularies a bit)
face reality, …
face reality, asshole.
anyway, i have people working for me.
not like you, homeless poor sick bastard!
Wow. You’re a …
Wow. You’re a horrible human being. If you’re really an engineer, you should know that it’s our duty to value human life above all else. You are a shame to your employment and to your country.
it’s so called …
it’s so called collateral damage.
So…you’re saying …
So…you’re saying that the thousands of elementary school students who died deserved it?
Hate the government if you must, that has nothing to do with the *civilians*.
china deserves it!
china deserves it!
Are you an idiot??? …
Are you an idiot??? China was the one who help Pakistan when they had their earthquake…
China stood against the Americans on their war on terror.
China repeatedly defies American policy
Why do you think the US media is against China nowadays?
Use your brain…
allah! the supreme, …
allah! the supreme, had punished these eivil race, more is coming on the way. Allah hepls those who are helpless….regardless of their faith, that is true muslim and islam. JIHAD!! JIHAD!! AGAINST COMMUNIST….
Tragedy?, tragedy …
Tragedy?, tragedy is that less than the half of them died!!
See its a tragedy for people who have common sense and choose not to be so twisted about a situation that couldve happaned to anyone.
Tragedy?, tragedy …
Tragedy?, tragedy is that less than the half of them died!!
AND YOU STILL …
AND YOU STILL HAVENT LEARNED YOU WILL STILL SUPPORT YOUR GOVT AND UR ARMY ACTIONS AND THE ATTROCITIES THAT THEY WILL LAY ON THE TIBETANS IN THE NEAR FUTURE
Ever heard of dont judge a book by its cover?IM not even a Chinese citizen, IM from American soil.Also I never said I didnt think Tibet suffered harshly under Communists from China.Infact I never really said I had hostility against them at all.
NOW TELL ME WHAT IS SO RACIST IN THIS????
Your using it for your own gain, thats what.
TELL ME SERIOUSLY …
TELL ME SERIOUSLY HAVE YOU EVER PRAYED FOR ALL THOSE INNOCENT TIBETANS AND THERE FAMILY MEMBERS WHOSE LIFE WERE LOST IN THE WAR FOR FREEDOM FROM CHINESE GOVT??????
But was this video on Tibet?THis was a recent tragedy and this entire forum revolved around the recent earthquake.Other then asking me, a person whos merely here to argue maybe you should look at yourself who came to this forum, not a Tibet forum this forum to justify the quake.
say us people would …
say us people would never learn
AND YOU STILL HAVENT LEARNED YOU WILL STILL SUPPORT YOUR GOVT AND UR ARMY ACTIONS AND THE ATTROCITIES THAT THEY WILL LAY ON THE TIBETANS IN THE NEAR FUTURE
NOW TELL ME WHAT IS SO RACIST IN THIS????
INstead of saying I …
INstead of saying I pray for Chinese who died in the earthquake you said I think my god gave CHinese what they deserved.Dont act innocent.
TELL ME SERIOUSLY HAVE YOU EVER PRAYED FOR ALL THOSE INNOCENT TIBETANS AND THERE FAMILY MEMBERS WHOSE LIFE WERE LOST IN THE WAR FOR FREEDOM FROM CHINESE GOVT??????
YES I DO AGREE THAT …
YES I DO AGREE THAT MY GOVT AND MY ARMY DOES KILLS TIBETANS AND I STRONGLY OPPOSE THAT AND I DESIRE THEM A FREE PIECE OF LAND.YOU JUSTIFY YOUR COMM GOVT ACTIONS BY SAYING THAT AMERICA DOES THE SAME THING
Question when you watched this video, all you said was Chiense, human beings deserved a travesty and justified it yourself.INstead of saying I pray for Chinese who died in the earthquake you said I think my god gave CHinese what they deserved.Dont act innocent.
lolz when did i …
lolz when did i said anything against ur race????? speaking against ur army and your goverment is not racist my frd
Didnt you qoute say us people would never learn or how Chinese deserved such a thing onto them?
and yes offcourse they were innocent but you cant expect ALLAH to come all the way from heaven to kill ur govt do u ?????
So he stops half way and slaughters those who had nothing to do with Tibet?Also in reports shown Tibetan Chinese were also killed in this earthquake.
lolz when did i …
lolz when did i said anything against ur race????? speaking against ur army and your goverment is not racist my frd
and yes offcourse they were innocent but you cant expect ALLAH to come all the way from heaven to kill ur govt do u ?????and right now instead of accepting the fact that.YES I DO AGREE THAT MY GOVT AND MY ARMY DOES KILLS TIBETANS AND I STRONGLY OPPOSE THAT AND I DESIRE THEM A FREE PIECE OF LAND.YOU JUSTIFY YOUR COMM GOVT ACTIONS BY SAYING THAT AMERICA DOES THE SAME THING
also what your …
also what your saying is that your god other then punishing the people directly responsible for the crimes against Tibet, your placing a earthquake that killed only the thousands of people under the race of Chinese you call evil in nearly every statement you make, tell me are you saying your god is just too pathetic to punish the people who did this directly to Tibetans or will he himself become evil and destroy the innocent who only look like and share the same skin color as those?
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