Experts offer advice on quake rebuilding

They were taken by bus through the main streets, where bare shells of broken apartment buildings remain standing but empty. Rows of blue and white tents — part of hundreds of temporary resettlement camps throughout the province — lined the sides of the road, a visible reminder that an estimated 80 percent of the city's residents have been displaced.

Commercial shops were largely shuttered while bulldozers and backhoes rumbled at sites across the city. Blue fences surrounded flattened lots where the worst-hit buildings had been demolished.

But their first stop was high above the city at the badly damaged Two Kings Temple, a 1,500-year-old Taoist sanctuary set in the hills overlooking a river. A dozen workers in hard hats were busy sifting through debris with bare hands to salvage bricks to be used in reconstructing the historic site.

The tour, organized by government officials, included a 10-minute stop at the site of a three-story gym that had dramatically pancaked in one corner, before the experts were herded back on the bus. The brief visit reflected the sensitivity that remains over accusations that poor construction of buildings, particularly at schools, had contributed to the huge loss of life.

The half-day trip showcased only a fraction of the quake's power, said Steven French, an urban planner from the Georgia Institute of Technology who creates computer models that assess damage by earthquakes.

"We saw a pretty small slice of damage today," he said. "I'd rather we'd gotten closer to the epicenter. I'd like to have seen what happened in the rural areas. I wanted to see how the landslides affected the areas."