The official rescue efforts have stopped at the Juyuan Middle School, where at least 600 students were trapped during the violent earthquake in China's Sichuan province, which will leave an estimated 4.8 million people homeless, Chinese authorities said today. But while the workers have left the site of the three-story building in the village of Juyuan, neighbors and parents still gather here to try to comprehend why the children who went off to class Monday disappeared under tons of broken concrete. Some scramble over the debris, searching for any reminders of the dead. Others stand in the muddy, trash-filled lot and discuss the tragedy with a tone that drifts between sadness and rage.
That anger is flowing in communities across the disaster zone. While the overall death toll has passed 21,500 and is expected to climb as high as 50,000, there is special tragedy — and perhaps a whiff of scandal —...