The enormous loss of life in collapsed schools around China’s quake-stricken Sichuan Province could have been significantly reduced using known methods for designing or retrofitting structures in earthquake zones, several experts on global hazards said on Tuesday. But China is just one of many countries with known earthquake vulnerability that has been slow to transform schools — a keystone of any community — from potential death traps into havens, these experts and some community campaigners for school safety said.Hundreds of students are thought to have perished in schools during the earthquake, among more than 13,000 deaths in all. Experts on earthquake dangers have warned for years that tens of millions of students in thousands of schools, from Asia to the Americas, face similar risks, yet programs to reinforce existing schools or require that new ones be built to extra-sturdy standards are inconsistent, slow and inadequately financed. While earthquakes can sometimes exact a far wider toll on other public buildings, school collapses are particularly wrenching, experts say.In 2004, the 30-nation Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development released a study, concluding that schools “routinely” collapsed in earthquakes around the world because of avoidable design or construction errors, or because existing laws and building codes were not enforced.
