Building Collapses

Activists and Los Angeles city officials questioned Thursday how it was possible that an apartment building that collapsed Sunday was deemed in compliance by the housing department within the last year. "It's mind-boggling to me how it could have been passed just a few months earlier and now it has collapsed," said Albert Lowe of the tenants' rights group Strategic Actions for a Just Economy.

The owner of an apartment building that collapsed Sunday in Los Angeles' Koreatown, injuring four people, was convicted last fall of numerous fire and health code violations and agreed to sell all of his roughly 150 rental properties as part of a plea agreement that allowed him to avoid jail time, records show. Frank McHugh, 82, of Marina del Rey was given three years to sell his apartment buildings in an agreement approved by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Spurgeon Smith.

Chinese officials, facing a barrage of questions from bereaved parents and angry citizens, say they will launch an investigation into why so many schools were toppled by last week's earthquake. Officials said that at least 6,898 schoolrooms had collapsed in Sichuan province, where the quake was centered.

A hillside school where about 500 students usually crowded onto several floors collapsed during classes Friday, killing at least 47 people and injuring many more. Rescuers used bare hands to pull bleeding students from the wreckage. More children were believed buried in the rubble of the concrete building, and the death toll was expected to go higher, said Yphosiane Vil, a civil protection official.

Rescuers pulled four children alive Saturday from the rubble of a three-story school that collapsed on hundreds of students and teachers, killing at least 88 people. Emergency workers cradled the dazed children in their arms and rushed them into ambulances, U.N. police spokesman Andre Leclerc said. The extent of the injuries to the two girls, ages 3 and 5, and two boys, a 7-year-old and a teenager, was unknown, Leclerc said.

A Chinese official said today that 19,065 of the people who died in May's massive earthquake in Sichuan province have been identified. Li Jiang from the Sichuan provincial propaganda office said that an official translation at a news conference incorrectly stated that 19,065 schoolchildren had died. The government still has not given a figure for students killed. The earthquake left nearly 90,000 people dead or missing. Thousands of shoddily built schools collapsed.

A four-story boarding school collapsed in Tichakpura, a village in the western state of Gujarat, killing at least 11 girls and injuring 14, an official said. The principal said he had told state officials the school urgently needed repairs.

A violent storm lashed northern India, causing several buildings to collapse and leaving 27 people dead, officials said. Twenty-four people were killed in the town of Sultanpur in the state of Uttar Pradesh where several buildings were destroyed; three people were killed by lightning in the neighboring town of Pratapgarh, police said. "In a majority of the cases trees fell on the houses," said police spokesman Surendra Srivastava. "The people who were inside were crushed to death."

Part of a roof collapsed at a luxury condo-and-retail high-rise under construction in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village, hospitalizing three workers. Ten more were seen at hospitals as a precaution. While workers were pouring concrete for the roof, a section of it collapsed onto the 12th and 13th floors, West Metro Fire spokesman Howard Hardy said. The cause was under investigation.

At least 24 people were killed and nine others injured when a seven-story building collapsed in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, officials said. At least 10 people were feared trapped in the rubble, said Gopal Shetty, a state lawmaker. The structure contained stores, a clinic and residences. It was not immediately clear what caused the collapse. Rescue workers toiled through the night, pulling aside chunks of masonry with their bare hands.