Pressure grows in China for nationwide audit of major structures - The Australian - theaustralian.com.au

Pressure grows in China for nationwide audit of major structures

Rowan Callick, China correspondent May 21, 2008

THE Chinese Government is coming under unusual pressure from the public and construction experts to consider a massive nationwide reinforcement program in response to the collapse of so many schools and other public buildings in the Sichuan earthquake.

Architects and engineers throughout the country have begun to urge the central Government to order an unprecedented audit of major structures, as the confirmed death toll from the May 12 quake reached 39,577.
The call follows widespread condemnation of the "tofu buildings" - that may look fine but are inside as soft as tofu - that buried thousands of people in Sichuan.
Experts being quoted in strongly argued articles now spreading through the Chinese media point to Japan, where in 1995 a quake in Kobe not much less powerful killed only about a tenth of the likely final death tollin Sichuan, despite being located directly under a city of 1.5million people.
The chief difference is the quality of the buildings. Almost all the deaths in Sichuan have been within buildings whereas in Japan schools are the strongest buildings and are often used as earthquake shelters.
Jiang Weixin, the Minister of Housing and Urban-Rural Construction, last week announced an inquiry into the collapse of structures in Sichuan and warned contractors and builders would be "severely punished" if found to have compromised quality.
Wu Hua, a senior architect at Beijing's Dada Architecture and Design Company, told The Australian that "school buildings in China are still being constructed according to the same standards as other commercial structures, so it's no wonder that many fell down this time".
She and fellow architects and other construction industry professionals are calling for an urgent review of the earthquake resistant capabilities of school buildings in China, and of other public buildings - followed by a massive reinforcement program, if proven necessary as they expect. Implementation of existing standards is a further concern, Ms Wu said.
"Most of the collapsed school buildings are in rural areas, where people are right to question the quality of supervision by relevant government departments."
Principals in China must usually find a large proportion of the costs of building, running and maintaining their schools from non-government sources, a task made tougher following the insistence of Beijing - in a popular move - that all Chinese children be given nine years' free, compulsory schooling.
One common answer to this challenge is to contract out the construction of new buildings to construction companies and permit them to collect revenues - for instance, from dormitory fees.
A leading Shanghai architect, who asked to remain anonymous, said: "Without strict supervision, builders are very likely to use low-quality material, including steel reinforcing rods with poor strength, or they will reduce the numbers of rods in the cement, or even use iron bars instead.
"Even though China has a set of standards for examining buildings for earthquake resistance, very often this examination is just a surface-only procedure."
A government construction official in Changsha city, Hunan province, who writes a popular blog as Youke67, wrote yesterday: "Local government departments in charge of building quality supervision clearly failed in their job in Sichuan."
An architect wrote online that he was shocked to view on TV that "the collapsed building of Juyuan Middle School (where about 900 children perished) used prefabricated concrete board. In the current design standards, that's strictly forbidden."
Meanwhile, the population of Beichuan, the town in the mountains that has been the worst hit, yesterday climbed back up to 40,000 as lines of rescuers - khaki soldiers, orange firefighters, blue police - fanned out beneath their banners to listen for any final, faint signs of life, to recover bodies, and to start to make the ruins safe.
Heavy equipment - bulldozers, mobile cranes, diggers - clogs the single-lane road into town, dodging the vast boulders that remain as monuments to the quake's devastating force.
Yao Ying-quan, a public servant co-ordinating the aid effort, says all surviving inhabitants havebeen told to evacuate their homes, though they are permitted to watch rescue efforts, behind a safe line.
China's banking regulators yesterday ordered banks to ensure adequate loans and other support for companies and individuals in the quake zone. The Government has reported that companies suffered 67 billion yuan ($10 billion) in damage from the quake, with more than 14,200 companies damaged.
While oil and gas operations in the region are virtually back to normal, power plants have less than three days' supply in some areas, the Government said yesterday, adding to the country's logistical headaches.


This artical discusses the quality and structural stability of many of the strucutres that perished during the earth quakes recently. ANd as such most likely tripled the amount of deaths that occured.