Chinese quake investigator pinpoints school failings

BEIJING-An official investigator has said one of the schools that crumpled during China's earthquake, killing hundreds, was fatally weakened by poor design and materials, adding weight to grieving parents' claims of deadly failings.The death toll from the May 12 earthquake centered in southwest China's Sichuan province is more than 68,500 and is sure to rise with 20,000 missing. Based on calculations from Chinese news reports, the dead include at least 9,000 students and teachers whose schools fell or were buried under landslides.Many parents have said their children were crushed in shoddy school buildings that toppled while nearby apartments and government offices stayed upright.Chen Baosheng, an expert from Tongji University in Shanghai, told a Chinese newspaper that was certainly true of the Juyuan Middle School, where hundreds of children died."There were certainly problems with site selection, the building's structure and structural features, the construction and materials," Chen, a member of an investigation team under the Ministry of Construction, told the Southern Weekend.Steel reinforcement rods in the building's concrete were too thin, and pillar supports were not properly attached, Chen said."It was to be expected that a building like this collapsed in an earthquake and it would have been strange only if it didn't," he added.The public acknowledgement comes as grieving parents begin to demand compensation and criminal investigations. One of those parents at Juyuan, Dong Tianjian, said they were retaining lawyers and considering taking their demands to Beijing.

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