Houses collapsed and roads buckled when the quake hit, with much of the intensity concentrated in Lushan, a county just southwest of the provincial capital of Chengdu.

WSJ: Death Toll From China Quake Rises to 186

Rusted wheels stand silent, gap-toothed wooden houses are half-collapsed: the rotten shards of a thousand dreams of riches.

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Photographs he showed from Sandy's destruction looked very much like those after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005: houses washed from their slabs or collapsed into their foundations, and critical equipment such as generators or switches flooded on ground floors or in basements.

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The property market has completely collapsed so why would anybody build houses here when there are houses all over Northern Ireland that can't be sold?

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"The number of collapsed buildings this time is less, and most are old houses that were built long before, " added Wang Ruheng, dean of the school of civil engineering and architecture at Southwest University of Science and Technology in the city of Mianyang, in Sichuan province.

WSJ: After China Quake, Efforts Turn to Recovery