As peace is gradually restored in the earthquake-hit county of Ning'er in southwest China's Yunnan Province, local people are addressing the issue of structurally flawed housing.
   
The earthquake, measuring 6.4 on the Richter Scale, destroyed 34,300 houses and damaged 140,000 others, and the magnitude of the figure is being blamed on poor quality and unsafe housing.
   
"The houses were built by villagers on their own without any specific design," said Feng Zhicheng, head of the provincial construction department of Yunnan.
   
Many of the houses that were destroyed did not a have a framework and the walls were very thin, said Feng.
   
Quake-prone Yunnan has seen 18 strong earthquakes in the past decade, with three measuring more than 6.0 on Richter scale.
   
Yang Hui, a professor with Yunnan University, stressed that lessons should be drawn from this disaster.
   
"The earthquake shows which housing design is more suitable to the local climate and geological conditions," she said. "Now we can avoid such heavy losses next time by promoting that design."
   
The province announced in March a ten-year plan to gradually improve the housing conditions for one million villagers. About 500 million yuan (US$65.7 million) has been allocated to the project, which will benefit 100,000 villagers this year.

(Xinhua News Agency June 7, 2007)