China official withdraws from Olympic torch relay

Calls attention to lax oversight's role in quake toll

Police removed disinfectant as smoke billowed yesterday near a refugee camp in China's Sichuan Province. Rain had set off a chemical reaction in the relief goods. (Bo Bor/Reuters)

MIANYANG, China - A Sichuan Province official has withdrawn as an Olympic torchbearer to acknowledge that lax government oversight of construction may have contributed to the collapse of dozens of schools that killed at least 9,000 children in this month's earthquake.

Lin Qiang, vice inspector of the province's educational department, said the buildings might have been able to better withstand the quake's force "if we educational officials hadn't left loopholes for corruption," the government-run New China News Agency reported yesterday.

Faced with mounting parental anger over their children's deaths, a government-organized team of building engineers has begun inspections of at least one of the devastated schools. At Fuxin No. 2 Primary School in Mianzhu City, investigators took photos of the ruins and samples of the tons of concrete and bricks that crushed 127 students, according to a parent monitoring the situation.

Meanwhile, recovery efforts in Beichuan County, one of the hardest hit in the May 12 quake, faced new hardships. A stockpile of chemicals used to disinfect the rubble of thousands of buildings ignited, engulfing the area in heavy smoke and dangerous fumes, state television reported. At least 800 people in the area were evacuated and 61 soldiers were injured.

Heavy rain complicated the government's race to prevent the most dangerous of 34 landslide-created lakes from bursting its banks. More than 158,000 people have been evacuated downstream of the Tangjiashan "quake lake" near Beichuan, and 5 million more who live in Mianyang City have been participating in evacuation drills in recent days as the lake's waters continue to rise.

About 600 soldiers worked through the night to dig a channel that would provide a controlled flow for the water, but helicopters that had been ferrying equipment and fuel to the site were grounded by the weather in midafternoon, state media reported.

Even as they continue the grim task of totaling the rising toll of confirmed deaths - 68,516 so far, and expected to rise to at least 80,000 - government officials are beginning to calculate the quake's economic impact. The State Information Center estimated that the earthquake caused economic losses of more than $86 billion.