Theres nothing people can do at the moment of the earthquake, other than just hide under your table and pray for the best. It all comes down to the construction of the building. Would've those kids have died if there were proper steel wire reinforcement in the concrete? How come the government building didn't collapse? How come no major shopping malls collapsed? How come majority of the people that died were inside either schools or residential homes? Because those buildings were not constructed when overseeing by possible future tenants, whereas the commercial buildings are constantly monitored by its company personnels and the government building built with over the top quality standards, using tax payers money. I can guarantee that the city hall in Wenchuan would be the last building to collapse.
On the other hand, the pool of funds for construction of school buildings are just another gold mine officials can get their hand into.
At the risk of derailing the thread, I have to say that this line of reasoning is a typical "hindsight is 20/20". Obviously in any city, there will be levels of wealth. Some buildings will be constructed of higher quality while others are constructed of lower quality, depending on how much the builders were willing to spend.
In fact, this research paper:
A field damage survey of 1,005 buildings damaged by the Wenchuan Earthquake in Dujiangyan City was carried out and the resulting data was analyzed using the statistical method. It is shown that buildings that were seismically designed achieved the desired seismic fortifi cation target; they sustained less damage than the non-seismically designed buildings. Among the seismically designed buildings investigated, RC frame buildings performed the best in terms of seismic resistance. Masonry buildings with a ground story of RC frame structure were the second best, and masonry buildings performed the worst. Considering building height, multistory buildings sustained more severe damage than high-rise buildings and 2-and 3-story buildings. Compared to residential buildings, public buildings, such as schools and hospitals, suffered more severe damage.
contradicts your claim that residential homes were less safe than public buildings.
The fact that some public buildings were better built than other public buildings is not proof of anything. Why would government official buildings be held to a higher standard than schools and hospitals? They are equally as susceptible to corruption and cut-backs as any other public building. If anything, the higher budget of those buildings make them an even more tempting target for corruption. After all, how many top officials actually supervise the construction of their work place, or even cares, for that matter??
If you had a corrupt official, what do you think he's going to think:
1- Oh I work at that building, better build it to withstand earthquake, you never know!
2- Hey, I can pocket 3 Million Yuan if we cut this corner, and nobody will ever notice!
It simply doesn't make sense to claim that corruption was the reason behind school collapses, when the far more obvious reason is simply unequal wealth distribution.
And just to prevent this from derailing further, this will be my only post on this subject.
