Earthquake toll rises as nation counts costs
2008-9-5
THE death toll from the May 12 earthquake in Sichuan Province may reach 88,000 and the direct economic loss has topped 845.1 billion yuan (US$123.62 billion).
These chilling statistics were released yesterday by Shi Peijun, director of the National Wenchuan Earthquake Expert Committee, at a press conference in Beijing.
The southwestern province, the center of the deadliest natural disaster in China in three decades, accounted for 91.3 percent of the total direct economic loss, Shi said. The neighboring provinces of Gansu accounted for 5.8 percent and Shaanxi 2.9 percent.
More than 70 percent of the economic losses came from damaged houses, schools and hospitals and infrastructure such as roads and bridges, he said.
The quake, centered in Sichuan's Wenchuan County, had killed nearly 70,000 people by mid-July and left 5 million homeless.
About another 18,000 were still missing, Shi said, adding that hopes of survival for these people were increasingly slim given that it has been three months since the disaster.
Since the May 12 earthquake, China had recorded more than 27,000 aftershocks, Ma Zongjin, chairman of the expert committee, told the conference. Eight were greater than 6.0 magnitude on the Richter scale, with 39 above 5.0.
A magnitude 6.1 quake struck Sichuan and Yunnan provinces on Saturday, killing at least 38 people. More than 500,000 homes were damaged and about 191,000 people were evacuated.
The aftershocks may continue for some time but the chance of a tremor above a magnitude of 6.5 was "quite low," Ma said.
He also admitted that poor-quality construction materials used in some school buildings were one of the possible reasons behind the deaths of the thousands of students.
"In recent years a lot of school buildings have been built in China and in this process of rapid development, some problems may exist," Ma said.
He said some school buildings might have been made with materials that were "not very firm" and their "structure was not entirely rational."
Some places built classrooms with poor supports, exacerbating the impact of poor cement or steel, Ma said.
A key problem was the lack of reinforcement, he said. Large classrooms were often supported by columns that could not withstand major earthquakes.
The government said it still had no official estimate of how many students died, even though the new school year started this week.
The Ministry of Construction has sent more than 2,000 experts to quake-ravaged areas to investigate design flaws.
Accusations of shoddy school constructions have been in the spotlight, with many questioning why some schools collapsed while nearby buildings were left standing.
Ma said the investigation would provide guidelines for the reconstruction of schools and hospitals.
