Sichuan Earthquake.

The death toll continues to mount in China following Monday's earthquake, with some of the more devastated areas not even reporting their casualties yet.

This is interesting to note:

On May 13 Newsweek spoke to Weimin Dong of Risk Management Solutions, a firm that specializes in assessing financial risks due to physical catastrophes like storms and earthquakes. He noted that the current earthquake’s intensity—a measure of how far the ground moves from its original position during the earthquake—was over 9, whereas Chinese building codes require that buildings be able to survive an earthquake of intensity 7.

Asked why the requirements were set so low, Dong said: “You cannot require all of the buildings designed to [be fully equipped], because it costs a lot. You have to have larger beam sizes and everything else, so it’s a cost consideration. [...] It’s not like in Beijing or Shanghai—there they just pull down the old building and build a new high-rise. But in the rural areas, the larger buildings are the older buildings.

“From the pictures of the schools, it seems like there was some kind of reinforcement, but it [was] not well designed [and] it doesn’t seem like the building design considered the impact of earthquakes at all.”

As I said before, what's a few hundred thousand (or even a few million) dead Chinese anyway? There are a lot more from where they came from, so corporations dependent on slave labor won't be hurting.

The death toll has officially risen to 15,000. Nearly 60,000 people are missing near the epicenter of the quake. Rescuers have their work cut out for them as they reach the epicenter.

I wouldn't be surprised if the total dead ultimately tops 100,000.

Now officials are worried about cracks in a dam as a result of the earthquake.