Cataclysmic lessons

Many survivors I've spoken to became first responders after being rescued by soldiers and firefighters. Many who said they previously only cared about “their” money now invest in helping others.

Some of the vulnerable they support are also quake victims – people with disabilities or lost loved ones. Others are prey to different manifestations of nature's malice, such as cancer.

Quakes are “acts of God”, but their consequences spring from the actions of man. This can be seen not only in the rebuilding after the Wenchuan quake but also the construction before the April 20, 2013, Ya'an disaster.

The accelerated development of the area since the tremor five years ago meant fewer buildings – and no schools – crumpled in the recent tremor, while the body count is a fraction of Wenchuan's.

These lessons are important for the world, but especially for China.

The country's surface is the impact locus of three tectonic plates that pucker roughly two-thirds of its topography into mountains.

There's a more than 90 percent overlap of China's poorest and most geologically hazardous locations.

This is largely because of poor soil, and lacerated access to such amenities as electricity, plumbing and transportation. But it's also caused by geological menaces, such as landslides and quakes.

Between the Wenchuan and Ya'an disasters came more than 400 tremors of magnitude 4 or higher and about 180,000 around magnitude-1.

The Longmen fault line is constantly fluctuating, sometimes humming, sometimes jolting. And it's not China's only twitchy slice of the earth's connective tissue that will eventually – but suddenly – be torn asunder.

China and the world have learned many lessons spanning engineering to ethics from the Wenchuan tremors.

Ya'an best demonstrates these, as more recently constructed buildings stood and volunteers rushed in.

The planet's crust will continue to split, to hurt and kill. But when it does, people are now more prepared to unite, to save and heal.

That's Wenchuan's lesson to the world.