A real Chinese Quake Hero

ralphrepo · Jun 16, 2008

Never mind the government orchestrated propaganda (paratroopers dropping out of the sky to save survivors), here's an example of what true courage and integrity is (making a building safe for kids despite the political opposition, BEFORE the earthquake):

A Chinese school, shored up by its principal, survived where others fell
By Edward Wong Sunday, June 15, 2008
Huang Yuanxi contributed research from Beijing.

SANGZAO, China: The students lined up row by row on the outdoor basketball courts of Sangzao Middle School in the minutes after the earthquake. When the head count was complete, their fate was clear: All 2,323 were alive. Parents covered in blood and dust hugged them. Everyone cried. So did the school principal, Ye Zhiping. "That was the single most joyful thing," he said. Given that about 10,000 other children were crushed in their classrooms during the devastating quake on May 12, the survival of so many students in Sangzao counts as a minor miracle. Students and parents credit that to "Angel Ye."

Nervous about the shoddiness of the school building, Ye scraped together more than 400,000 yuan, or about $60,000, over three years to renovate. He had workers widen concrete pillars and insert iron rods into them. He demanded stronger balcony railings. He demolished a bathroom that had been weakened by water. His school in Peace County very likely withstood the 8.0-magnitude earthquake because he pushed the county government to upgrade it. Just 32 kilometers, or 20 miles, north the collapse of Beichuan Middle School buried 1,000 students and teachers.

Ye's tale sheds light on the lax building codes in this mountainous corner of Sichuan Province and what might have been done to address well-known shortcomings. In his case, a personal commitment and a seemingly petty amount of cash sufficed to avert tragedy. "We learned a lesson from this earthquake: The standards for schools should have been improved," Ye, 55, said in a recent interview. "The standards now are still not enough." Ye not only shored up the building's structure but also had students and teachers prepare for a disaster. They rehearsed an emergency evacuation plan twice a year. Because of that, students and teachers say, everyone managed to flee in less than two minutes on May 12.

"We're very thankful," Qiu Yanfang, 62, the grandmother of a student, said as she sat outside the school knitting a brown sweater. "The principal helped ease the nation's loss, both the psychological loss and the physical loss." The Chinese government estimates that more than 7,000 schoolrooms collapsed in the earthquake. The widespread destruction has prompted grieving parents to take to the streets to demand investigations, and that in turn has become the biggest political challenge to government officials in the aftermath of the earthquake. This month, the police began clamping down on the protests.

It has been difficult to establish responsibility for the school collapses, partly because it is unclear in many cases which level of government is responsible for the original school construction and for later inspections. The building codes that Ye criticized had been set by the central government in Beijing, he said. While county education officials did not take the initiative in improving Sangzao Middle School, they submitted to Ye's requests and gave him some money, he said.

Huang Zhichun, an official in the county education department, said by telephone: "Based on the fact that so many schools have collapsed, the standard is not good enough. The central government sets the standard." Government officials in Beijing and Sichuan have said they are investigating the collapses. In an acknowledgment of the weakness of building codes in the countryside, the National Development and Reform Commission said on May 27 that it had drafted an amendment to improve construction standards for primary and middle schools in rural areas. Experts are reviewing the draft, the commission said.

They could do worse than consult with Ye. A squat man who speaks in sharp bursts, he now lives with his wife in a refugee camp of green tents on the school's basketball courts. He started working at the school 30 years ago as an English teacher and has taught in every classroom. Some students say he is more playful and less strict than the teachers.

Sangzao is a farming town of 30,000 where merchants sell vegetables from blankets on a rutted market road. It has two middle schools - one administered by the township, where a dormitory collapsed during the earthquake, and the other administered by the county. Ye works in the second, where families from across northern Sichuan send their children because of the school's reputation. A large billboard on the school grounds lists the names of 90 students who got top scores on a national exam last year. The school is one of the largest in Peace County. It has a half-dozen dormitory buildings and two classroom buildings, all five stories or lower. One of the classroom buildings was constructed after 2000, the other between 1983 and 1985. The older one worried Ye when he became principal 12 years ago. It is a four-story white building with large tinted glass windows and blue metal railings running along balconies with classrooms.

"Quality inspectors were supposed to be here to oversee construction of this building," he said. "When the foundation was laid, they should have been here. When the concrete was put into the pillars, they should have been here. But they weren't. In the end, no government official dared to come inspect this building because it was built without any standards."

Ye walked down the hallways with a visitor and pointed to the corners where ceiling met wall. He said workers had stuffed canvas bags and trash into those crevices to seal them. In addition, he said, the surfaces of the walls were coarse rather than smooth, a sign of shoddy construction. The classrooms opened onto balconies overlooking the schoolyard. But the balcony railings were made of cement, not metal. They were shaky and too short, Ye said. They also lacked vertical pillars for support.

"I was among the first teachers who moved into this building, and I was pretty young," Ye said. "Our awareness of safety wasn't the same as now." He said his attitude changed after he became principal. "If I knew there was a hidden danger, and I didn't do anything about it, then I would be the one responsible," he said. From 1996 to 1999, Ye oversaw a complete overhaul. He said he pestered county officials for money. Eventually the education department gave him about 400,000 yuan. It was a troublesome process because the county was poor and thus tight with money, Ye said, but officials saw the need to ensure the safety of children. So the renovations began. Most crucial were changes made to concrete pillars and floor panels. Each classroom had four rectangular pillars that were thickened so they jutted from the walls. Up and down the pillars, workers drilled holes and inserted iron reinforcing rods because the original ones were not enough, Ye said. The concrete slab floors were secured so they would be able to withstand intense shaking.

Structural engineers and earthquake experts outside China who have examined photographs of collapsed schools point to two critical flaws: a lack of adequate iron reinforcing rods and poorly built hollow concrete slab floors. Ye said that construction codes improved after 2000 and that buildings were now supposed to be rated a 6 or 7 for earthquake preparedness. "But we see from this earthquake that the standard should be lifted to 11 or 12," he said. Each classroom in the main school building holds about 60 students. Each room is now a frozen tableau of 2:28 p.m. on May 12. Backpacks and textbooks are scattered across tables and chairs. A bag of oranges sits on a desk. Students said they dove under desks when the tremor hit. Then teachers led them onto the basketball courts outside.

"Many parents ran to the school afterward," said Yang Shihui, 40, an English teacher. "One mother started hugging her daughter and saying, 'Oh my daughter.' The daughter was fine. It was actually the mother who was covered in dirt and bleeding." Ye was in a city about 50 kilometers away when the ground began shaking. "On my way back, I saw that many buildings had been seriously destroyed," Ye said. "I was pretty concerned. But when I saw that all of my students were safe, I was very happy." These days, students dart in and out of the school to grab textbooks, ducking beneath a thin blue ribbon with a handwritten sign that says "Danger." To them, the building seems sturdy enough. But Ye said it would be torn down, never again used for classes.

quoted from:
The International Herald Tribune
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/06/15/asia/quake.php
Click to expand...

As the PRC government is now actively working to prevent quake protests and fingers of recrimination being pointed at local officials (who authorized or were responsible for the regional schools' shoddy construction), the above is a tale that is both instructive as well as poignant, of how things could be if the Chinese ever had enough courage to do so. The entire next generation of Sichuan died not because of an earthquake; they died because of corruption. Also, I fear for this man's life. As his story gets told and retold, its going to make the PRC government's handling of this seem all the worse. I think that this man is going to be made to disappear rather quickly and quietly, as his continued presence will be, by his stellar example, a huge embarrassment to officials

Interestingly too, the PRC official news organs has this to say:

Sangzao Middle School: No casualties

A middle school in Anxian County has reported no casualties among its more than 2,000 teachers and students during the earthquake. The school buildings only sustained minor damages during the quake. The afternoon of May 12th, the majority of students in Sangzao Middle School were in class when the earthquake struck. Feeling the tremors, the students immediately hid under their desks following their teachers' instruction. After the first tremors had passed, they quickly and orderly left the school. One minute and a half after the quake, all 2, 300 students and teachers made it safely to the playground. Liu Yin from Sangzao Middle School, said, "I did not panic when the earthquake occurred. We had already been through evacuation procedures. After receiving the signal from the school, the teacher of each class led the students out of the buildings."

The middle school had been practicing emergency evacuation since 2005, as required by the school's principal. Ye Zhiping said he was inspired by similar exercises in effect in some coastal areas. Ye Zhiping, principal of Sangzao Middle School, said, "Our school has a distinguishing feature: narrow areas. I was concerned by how we could evacuate students in case of fire." Ye Zhiping also reinforced one of the buildings after he assumed office. Ye Zhiping said, "Look at that pillar sticking out from the other side of the classroom. That is the result of reinforcing the wall of the classroom." Some other modifications were made following Ye Zhiping's order. Steel railings replaced brick ones. Load-bearing pillars were widened. The revamping cost 400,000 yuan. But the efforts paid off. The school buildings only sustained minor damages during the quake.
Click to expand...

Source (Both CCTV and Sina carried the same article):
http://www.cctv.com/english/20080602/110153.shtml
http://english.sina.com/1/2008/0602/164899.html

Interesting that the official Chinese articles seem to dilute the fact that modifications were made by Ye because of inadequate construction in the first place; in effect attempting to say that while construction was adequate, Ye decided to go above and beyond that, suggesting that it was the above and beyond regular standards, which was what saved the kids. Notice also the article leads in with the notation of fire evacuation (instead of a building's quake resilience); that alone suggests to me that editorially, they're trying to hide a fact within many other facts, so that they can still say that they told the truth, but nonetheless work to obscure or mask its real significance by mixing it with other unimportant issues.

Ralph

A real Chinese Quake Hero

ralphrepo Well-Known Member