Most of the 25 deaths in last Thursday's earthquake in Yingjiang county, Yunnan, which also left 314 injured, were due to the collapse of poorly constructed buildings built from hollow bricks, authorities say.
The head of the county's urban construction bureau, Yin Anqiang, said hollow-brick buildings were common in Yingjiang because they were cheap to build but they were the most dangerous buildings to be in during a quake. Yin said the use of hollow bricks was now banned.
Most of the toppled buildings in the quake zone were made of hollow bricks and did not have foundations, the Nanfang Daily reported.
Late on Sunday, authorities released a list of the 25 people killed in the quake, including several pupils and two infant girls, one 2 1/2 years old and the other three years old.
Two pupils at the county's national middle school died under a pile of hollow bricks when the school's bathhouse collapsed.
Earthquakes strike Yingjiang frequently. Between 1991 and 2008, eight earthquakes with magnitudes higher than 5 hit the county, about 700 kilometres west of the provincial capital, Kunming .
After a quake in August 2008, the central government allocated funding for the construction of strong, earthquake-resistant buildings.