For parents of quake victims, grief turns to anger

By John Ruwitch

WUFU, China (Reuters) - Nearly every building in the tiny rural town of Wufu withstood the earthquake that shook China on Monday -- except the New Number Two Primary School which collapsed, killing some 300 children.

Now grieving parents, many of whom dug through rubble with their hands in a frantic effort to save their children, are venting their anger at local officials who they claim knew the building was substandard.

Jumbled mounds of concrete and brick are all that remain of the three-storey schoolhouse that caved in just moments before afternoon classes were to begin. Notebooks, backpacks, clothes and a tin lunch box litter the picked-over rubble.

The scene is repeated in towns and cities across the quake-damaged section of Sichuan, where more than 50,000 people may have died, including hundreds of students crushed when their schools collapsed.

The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development has ordered local authorities to investigate.

Bi Kaiwei's 13-year-old daughter, Yuexing, was in her second-storey sixth-grade classroom when the walls and ceiling crashed down in the quake.

"Our child wasn't killed by the earthquake. She and the others were killed by a derelict building," he said. "The officials knew it was unsafe.

"Look at that one there," Bi said, pointing diagonally across from where the school used to stand to a yellowish corner building spared of damaged. "We live there. It was built in 1982. It's still standing."  Continued...