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Built to withstand heavy jolts

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'The quality of the houses we are building today is 20 years more advanced than those built before the earthquake,' said Fan Dunkai, the onsite manager for the Post's Homes for Hope project in Qingquan village, Mianzhu city, in Sichuan province.

Mr Fan is responsible for overseeing construction progress and quality in Qingquan village, where the project will sponsor reconstruction of homes for 1,000 households.

All but three buildings in the village collapsed in the devastating quake on May 12 last year.

Mr Fan said most homes built in rural areas before the earthquake were made from precast hollow-core concrete planks, bricks or sometimes just sun-dried mud bricks.

'In the past, workers just laid a single or double width of bricks as walls without using any steel bars at four corner pillars. Precast concrete planks were used as floors or placed on top of the houses as roofs. There's no reinforcement structure in them,' he said. 'It's no surprise that they fell down like houses of cards when the quake struck.'

Learning a lesson from the catastrophe, the government ordered that all reconstructed buildings must meet quake-resistant criteria. In Qingquan, concrete ring beams are used in each house to confine walls; steel-bar reinforcing is used in corner pillars to provide stronger support and anchoring for walls and roofs.

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