Dujiangyan, China — Parents of children lost in the Sichuan earthquake plan to sue local government leaders over poor school construction standards they blame for the disaster.

At Juyuan middle school, Dujiangyan city, where hundreds of pupils aged between 12 and 16 lost their lives, family members gather every day, collecting signatures on a petition. Each name is marked with a red thumb-print for authenticity.

“I want justice,” a father of a teenage boy killed in the disaster, Zhang Xianqin, said, adding that more than 100 names had already been added to the petition, which demanded punishment of those responsible for the building. He said it would lead to a law suit if compensation were not forthcoming and blame assigned.

“Why is it that around this area it is only the classroom building that collapsed? What was the problem?”

Near the earthquake epicenter, whole towns have been virtually wiped out, but in other areas, it was public buildings, such as hospitals and particularly schools, which were particularly badly hit by the disaster.

The building that fell at Juyuan was only built in 1992. Others were even more recent.

Next to another school in the hills near Dujiangyan, Xiang’e, which dates to 1999, residents showed brickwork with cement they crumbled between their fingers to demonstrate it was made largely just of sand.

Gou Pingzhong, 54, described how at the end of the three minutes’ silence observed all across China on Monday, parents had charged the local officials standing to attention to demand an explanation.

Of the 400 dead in the township, more than 300 were schoolchildren.