China Travel Forum

Yesterday's earthquake in Wenchuan County has already killed more than 8000 local residents.

it has been a great disaster but have you any information of the actual situation?

The reason there are and will be so many deaths in the earthquake is due to modern chinese buiding practices! They insist on using cement and other cheap materials. They know that traditional building techniques in Yunnan are far superior. And there is also Bamboo, which grows in china, and which could be used to help the framework and make stronger structures:

http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/earthquakes/Bamboo/Bamboo.htm

Those homes also underwent an unplanned stress test.
In April 1991 an earthquake with a magnitude of 7.5 struck Costa Rica. Twenty bamboo houses stood at the quake's epicentre. Many of the concrete homes and hotels around them had collapsed but all 20 houses remained intact. One reason may be the light weight of bamboo. If you remember your physics from high school, force equals mass times acceleration so it is easy to see that a larger mass magnifies the force, which in this case, was an earthquake etc http://www.sutton.com/resourcecentre/Home_Maintenance/bamboo.html

Lots of children were killed while attending the school and more than 20 thousands military personnels are transported to Sichuan for further rescue.

Pray for all of them.

http://shanghaiist.com/2008/05/12/earthquake-hits-wenchuan-sichuan.php

Here there is good and complete information about the sad situation in Sichuan