[sam_paine]

And I don’t see any heavy equipment in sight either.

[brityank]

Moving heavy equipment around when the roads are cut or damaged or blocked with landslides, plus you're talking about an area the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined for the major damage, and another with minor damage. It is a huge area.

WRT the construction; there is some rebar used, but probably not as much as should have been -- graft is endemic in all societies.

In this photo distributed by the official
Xinhua news agency, rescuers search for
students at Juyuan Middle School in Juyuan
Township of Dujiangyan City, about 100 kilo-
meters from the epicenter in Wenchuan county
of southwest China's Sichuan Province, on
Monday May 12, 2008.
(AP Photo/Xinhua, Jiang Yi)