On the 12^th of May 2008 a devastating earthquake hit china apparently hitting around 7.9 in magnitude and destroying roads, toppling buildings and burying people in their own homes and cutting off electricity and communication. The disaster happened in the province of Sichuan near Chengdu in China yet could be felt within a radius of 3000 kilometres. Rescue workers have been using sniffer dogs and have also sticking small video cameras through the cracks of rubble to see if there is anyone their and see if they can help pull them out. The problem is that broken roads and no electricity or communications makes it awfully hard to reach the injured and near dead. At the end of the big earthquake their were a number of smaller ones called aftershocks, even though they are smaller they still cause a lot of damage by knocking over the buildings that were just left standing.
What they do to make the houses stronger is they put steel in the concrete to reinforce it and in places like Australia they have laws about how you can build your house and how earthquake and other natural disaster proof it really is, but the thing with these laws in Australia is that we are not exactly earthquake prone because it is right in the middle of a tectonic plate on the earths crust so while the plate moves Australia isn’t harmed because it moves with it but China’s not so lucky because it is right on the crack between two plates which rub together to make earthquakes.
Australia has offered to help China by sending in rescue workers to help clear the rubble but the victims of the earthquake and the people who have lost family, friends or even a home are going to really suffer because they have to go through all the emotional pain or having to rebuild their home after the destruction of the earthquake.