Earthquake at china and the aftermath

A powerful earthquake recently struck China on May 12th this year. The magnitude of the earthquake was a mind boggling 7.9 on the Richter Scale. In china it was named the Wenchuan Earthquake because the epicenter was in the Wenchuan province of Sichuan.
the death toll is expected to soar to as high as 50,000, with 20,000 confirmed dead. It was a disastrous day for China, which is currently gearing up for the Beijing Olympics, and now it has more on its hands than it can handle. All the highways were damaged and this resulted in the delayed arrival of the troops. lots of damage was inflicted. China Mobile's 2300 stations went offline after the attack. Who knows what happened to the pandas there..

Experts points out that the earthquake has hit an area that has been largely neglected and untouched by China's spectacular economic rise. Health care is poor in inland areas like Sichuan province, where the magnitude-7.9 quake struck, highlighting the yawning gap between prosperous urban dwellers and struggling rural people.

News report indictates that the poorer, rural villages were hardest hit. Swaminathan Krishnan, assistant professor of civil engineering and geophysics at the California Institute of Technology said: "the earthquake occurred in the rural part of China. Presumably, many of the buildings were just built; they were not designed, so to speak."
Swaminathan Krishnan further added: "There are very strong building codes in China, which take care of earthquake issues and seismic design issues. But many of these buildings presumably were quite old and probably were not built with any regulations overseeing them."