Why did so many new buildings fail?

'Some survivors said the whole building just sank into the earth'

In a sea of mud, tree limbs and rocks at what used to be Beichuan county's only high school, an old four-storey building is incongruously marooned.
Some roof tiles are broken, but otherwise, there is no obvious damage.

"That's where I studied more than 30 years ago," said a 50-year-old man, who gave his surname as Wang. He graduated in 1977.

Mr Wang has been glued to the rubble for more than 40 hours, waiting for a miracle to bring back his daughter, Wang Xiaolan, who was on the first floor of the new school building when Monday's quake struck.

More than 80 per cent of concrete structures in Beichuan - 34km from the quake epicentre - collapsed, and only four out of every 10 people survived. "She's probably dead," a dazed Mr Wang said in a toneless voice. "They've been pulling out bodies, and some survivors said the whole building just sank into the earth within a couple of minutes."

The building where Wang Xiaolan, a 23-year-old English teacher, was conducting a class with first-year high school students was built in 2004. It is one of the three buildings on the campus that tumbled into piles of rubble.

"All of them were built after 2000," Mr Wang said. "It's strange that the old buildings remained intact but new ones collapsed."

The only other concrete structure left standing is a four-storey residential building 100 metres away. Brown flower pots still sit on a small balcony on its top floor.

"That was built in the 1970s for school teachers," Mr Wang said. "The quality of the architecture - from the frame, steel, cement to bricks - everything, was much better back then."

As buildings came crashing down, questions are being asked whether corruption and shoddy construction are to blame for such a heavy toll.

Victims' families have started pointing fingers at local officials who are suspected of pocketing money budgeted for construction and at private real estate companies that had saved money by cutting corners on the project. When Premier Wen Jiabao was inspecting the township on Tuesday, Mr Wang was among the crowd, gripped by an urge to heckle him about the so-called tofu projects.

But he shook his hand instead, without saying anything. "I still can't get my head around it. My daughter was eating dinner with me on Sunday night, but the next day she's gone for good. How could that happen?"

Liu Yongzhi, 32, a worker at the Dongfeng Steam Turbine Plant, said he would ask Mr Wen why most public buildings in his town of Hanwang - 60km east of the epicentre - had toppled. The factory imploded into two metres of rubble, he said.

"It sounds unbelievable, but we were one of the top three steam turbine makers in the country," he said. "It vanished within a couple of seconds." Two schools affiliated with the factory were also destroyed, leaving 200 children buried.

A seven-storey, modern building in the township of 20,000 - which served as major entertainment spot for local cadres - also imploded, Mr Liu said. Several senior officials playing cards in a tea house on the second floor were killed.

Mr Liu's home - a single-family tiled house he built himself - withstood the quake.

"I laid down a really solid foundation for my place," he said. "There's not a single crack."

SCMP. May 16, 2008.