Special supplement: Chengdu 'safe as a steel pot'

At 2:28 pm on May 12, a magnitude-8 earthquake hit Wenchuan county, Sichuan province.

Within 80 seconds, houses collapsed and mountains and rivers moved in many parts of the province. But Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan less than 100 km from the epicenter, was unscathed.

Chengdu residents were fortunate because of the city's underlying geological structure. In any case the city will be free of another nearby magnitude 8 or even higher earthquake for 200 years because of the energy released by the Wenchuan earthquake, according to scholars attending a recent seismic and geological forum held in Chengdu.