Schools in Quake-hit City Opens for New Semester

Primary and high schools in Panzhihua in Southwestern China's Sichuan province start the new semester on Monday, a week delay due to a 6.1-magnitude earthquake on Aug 30th.

As many school buildings are damaged in the disaster, the city's education department has pleaded for tents and other materials and adopted several emergency measures. Kong Wei is the director of the education department in Panzhihua.

"We have fully explore every school's human and material resources, opening as much as classes and using the experimental and functional classrooms for normal study. Some students are arranged to study in other cities' school. Meanwhile, we also build some tents as temporary classrooms."

Kong Wei also introduced that as aftershocks are still possible in the area, every school will begin their first class with instructions on emergency evacuation and self-saving.

Last Saturday's earthquake has killed at least 38 people and left about 800 people injured, while more than 5 hundred thousand building collapsed.