Quality reconstruction

With schools in the quake-hit areas holding classes in tents, and government offices in the most severely devastated Beichuan county operating from a new site in a neighboring county, rebuilding stands out as a pressing imperative on the drawing board.

As medical workers, epidemic control professionals, as well as those producing, transporting, and assembling tents and temporary houses are racing against time to treat and accommodate victims, such haste must give way to cool-headed considerations about quality in reconstruction work.

With the outcomes of promised investigations pending, it is difficult to know to what extent quality problems, if they did exist, were responsible for the collapse of school buildings in which thousands of children and teachers were killed or still missing.