Hi all - I'm back now.

I know we have a concern about saving lives by attempting to predict earthquakes. We also know that by building with earthquakes in mind and using technology we save lives.

On seismic issues in China - not only was this site blocked (due to it being a prediction site) but many other sites were blocked as well - I could get to USGS related sites and see recent quake info.

China is madly developing and building as fast as it can - The olympics will be held there in 2008 and the signs are everywhere in new construction and other signs reminding the people to be nice to foreigners. But the one thing I noticed was that there appeared to be no engineering to reduce damage from earthquakes. Even in the Yunnan province where earthquakes are pretty common. Very little rebar and most buildings are brick with a very thin layer of cement over the brick. The way it was explained to me was that in China, life is cheap. It is such an odd thing to consider that "Life is Cheap". Its more cost-effective to build without building codes than it is to worry about a few lives (or many lives) lost during a quake. The official figures of population are 1.3 Billion people in China but I was told (more than once) that the real figure is more like 1.8 Billion due to the technology used to do a census.

The same attitude about life is shown in how they just tend to daily business - very little use of labor saving devices such as tractors or wreaking balls are used in any construction - we saw buildings coming down with the use of sledge hammers and chisels - one good thing is they re-use most materials - especially what little re-bar there is in the building gets recovered and re-used. We saw roads and walls being constructed and men chiseling the rocks to be used right there on-site. When we went to the Huangshan Mountains (Most beautiful place) we saw porters carrying a few hundred pound loads of everything up the steep mountainside - the cable cars were for carrying tourists, not freight, up the mountain side. Everything at the top of these mountains had been carried up whether it be building materials or foodstuffs. OSHA would have a field day in China!

Overall it was a fun trip - The scary thing to think about is the pace at which they are developing without concern for environmental issues is truly scary. (2% of wastewater is treated in China - Smog was unbelievable) - One comment was made by our instructor was that If China developes like the western world (like its madly trying to do) it will be an environmental disaster for the world.

Canie