An accident waiting to happen

The recent collapse of an apartment block in eastern China has highlighted a problem that could have fatal consequences for owners of buildings erected in the 1980s and '90s, as Yan Yiqi reports from Hangzhou.

Shen Dailu should have spent April 8 celebrating her 20th birthday in the company of family and friends. Instead, the young women from Fenghua in Zhejiang province spent the day in the hospital after the building in which she lived with her grandparents collapsed on April 4.

Her grandmother, with whom Shen had lived since her parents died when she was an infant, was killed in the collapse, and Shen's left leg was so seriously injured that it had to be amputated. Her grandfather was the only member of the family to escape unscathed, but only because he was out taking a walk when the 20-year-old building crumbled to the ground.