A Real Chinese Hero
With almost 100,000 people either dead or missing, and as many as 5 million now homeless, it is difficult to find many bright spots in the devastating earthquake that ripped through Sichuan Province several weeks ago. The reconstruction needed to repair the damage done in those few minutes will be an ongoing story for months and years to come. Whole cities may be gone forever.
Amidst all the devastation, however, the story of Sangzao Middle School and Ye Zhiping, its remarkable headmaster, stands out. “One minute and 36 seconds after the first tremors of the earthquake hit Sichuan province on May 12, more than 2,200 students and 100 teachers of the province’s Sangzao Middle School in Anxian County, Mianyang City, evacuated the school buildings and gathered at the playground. Not a single person was hurt.”
This amazing result was not an accident. It was due to the deep sense of responsibility that Ye Zhiping, who is now being called “the greatest headmaster in history,” brought to his job. “The parents have entrusted us with their children,” Ye said calmly in a recent interview with a Beijing radio station. We cannot let them down.”
Concerned with the stability of a lab building when he took over as head of the school in 1997, Ye commissioned a number of structural improvements—reinforcing columns; replacing heavy brick railings with light steel bars; injecting concrete into each floor—that ultimately enabled the building to remain standing. While the school had spent 170,000 yuan ($24,504) on the lab when it was built in the 1980’s, these structural reinforcements cost 400,000 yuan ($57,662). He also was very strict on the quality of the other buildings in the school.
In addition to looking after building safety, Headmaster Ye insisted on safety training. Beginning in 2005, he made it a rule to conduct one evacuation drill every semester. This prevented the stampeding that often occurs when a natural disaster such as an earthquake occurs, and enabled all of the students and the teachers to evacuate the school within one minute and a half after the quake. As one of the students commented afterwards, “I did not panic when the earthquake occurred. We had already been through evacuation procedures. After receiving the signal from the school, the teacher of each class led the students out of the buildings.”
Poorly constructed buildings, the use of inferior building materials, and inadequate safety precautions are some of the reasons why earthquakes in China take such an incredible death toll. Buildings are simply not built to withstand earthquakes, and too little attention is paid to safety. One positive outcome of this terrible tragedy will be improvements in each area, and Headmaster Ye’s example will be emulated throughout the country.
Expect tighter building codes for new buildings and reinforcement of existing structures as a result, certainly with schools, but also with other buildings as well. The need for this has been heard loud and clear. “China will build schools as the toughest strongholds of the country,” said Liu Yandong, member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, while visiting schools in Sichuan last week.
