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Seismology: The sleeping dragon

Nature volume 459, pages 153–157 (2009)Cite this article

A Correction to this article was published on 27 May 2009

The great Sichuan earthquake of 12 May 2008 caught Earth scientists off guard. A year on, Alexandra Witze reports from the shattered towns on how researchers have learned from their failures.

Tucked below towering hillsides in Bailu, in China's Sichuan province, two school buildings face one another across a courtyard. Both are several storeys high, white with cheery light-blue trim. It's a peaceful April day, cool and humid; a rubbish bin shaped like a penguin sits at the side of the courtyard, as if waiting for someone to toss in a candy wrapper. But no one will be feeding the penguin today. That's because a nearly 2-metre-high ridge of buckled and uplifted concrete runs right through the courtyard, a manifestation of the geological faults that spawned the great Sichuan earthquake of 12 May 2008.

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Authors
  1. Alexandra Witze
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Additional information

See Editorial, page 140

Alexandra Witze is Nature's chief of correspondents for America. Additional reporting by Jane Qiu, Nature's retained correspondent in Beijing.

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China Earthquake Administration

China Geological Survey

Chinese Academy of Sciences

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Witze, A. Seismology: The sleeping dragon. Nature 459, 153–157 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/459153a

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