Candles are lit on the ruins of battered
buildings to mourn the dead in Hanwang Town of Mianzhu City, southwest
China's Sichuan Province, May 9, 2009, three days before the anniversary
of the May 12 earthquake.(Xinhua Photo) Photo
Gallery>>>
BEIJING, May 10 (Xinhua) -- China needs stronger
steps to promote public preparedness and early warning systems for natural
disasters, experts said ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Wenchuan
earthquake.
The government will release its first white paper on
disaster prevention and reduction on May 12, the country's first national
disaster prevention day. The day is set to commemorate the Sichuan earthquake
last May which left more than 80,000 people dead and missing in southwest China.
To make the day, governments across the country have
started education campaigns to publicize knowledge on disaster prevention and
emergency rescue.
Bunches of flowers are laid on the ruins
of battered buildings to mourn the dead in Hanwang Town of Mianzhu City,
southwest China's Sichuan Province, May 9, 2009, three days before the
anniversary of the May 12 earthquake.(Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery>>>
In Sichuan Province, the government is distributing
books and handouts on construction guidelines, evacuation plans, landslide
prevention and control of the pests after disasters.
"The earthquake showed we were ill-prepared for
potential hazards," said Wang Qizhang, deputy director of Sichuan government
secretariat. "We found many people did not know how to react to the earthquake
and perform proper first aid.
"We must learn from the lesson and enhance public
awareness and abilities of self-protection."
The Shanghai government would focus on evacuation
exercises around the May 12 in a campaign to prepare thousands of students for
fires, quakes and typhoons, said Liu Nanshan, head of the city's emergency
agency.
"The central government has been urging us to
strengthen training on disaster prevention in schools, but it won't be effective
unless the science and knowledge are included in school courses," said Wang
Jiexiu, deputy director of the National Disaster Reduction Center of the
Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Disasters experts and officials also called for
building a nationwide information network to mobilize the public to monitor and
report potential disasters to local governments.
"Some devastation is avoidable. An effective public
monitoring and early warning system to alert people to risks from droughts,
floods, and earthquakes could save many lives," Wang said.
The China Meteorological Administration (CMA) would
train 1 million meteorologists in rural areas within five years to ensure every
village has the information needed to combat increasingly devastating weather
events, said Xu Xiaofeng, CMA vice director.
Their responsibilities included publicizing
meteorological knowledge, maintaining facilities and participating in drafting
emergency plans in villages.
Departments of civil affairs, forestry, land and
resources are also building public information networks. The Ministry of Land
and Resources has set up public monitoring systems in more than 120,000 places
with potential geological hazards.
But experts said a lack of coordination among
departments sometimes diminished efficiency.
"We hope the central government can build an
integrated information network so that every staff member can help monitor
disasters," said Ma Zongjin, an academician of China Academy of Sciences. "The
government needs to invest more to ensure the income of these staff in rural
areas."
China's top-down mobilization system coordinates
resources to increase efficiencies in rescue and reconstruction. The model could
also be adopted in coordinating the public and ministries in monitoring and
early warning, Ma said.
China is among countries most plagued by natural
disasters, with 70 percent of its cities and 50 percent of its 1.3 billion
people living in areas vulnerable to one or more kinds of natural disasters.
China has suffered major natural calamities,
including torrential floods in the Yangtze River valley in 1998, severe droughts
in Sichuan Province and Chongqing Municipality in 2006, winter storms in
southern China early last year, and the massive may 12 earthquake.
The United Nations said natural
disasters caused nearly 110 billion U.S. dollars of damage in China last year.
BEIJING, May 9 (Xinhua) -- The China Banking
Regulatory Commission (CBRC) said here Saturday the country's banking industry
has issued loans worth of 205.36 billion yuan (30.2 billion U.S. dollars) to
Sichuan, Shaanxi and Gansu provinces by March end for earthquake relief and
reconstruction.
A total of 168.99 billion yuan went to Sichuan
Province. Shaanxi and Gansu received 16.07 billion yuan and 20.31 billion yuan,
respectively, said the commission. Full story
BEIJING, May 8 (Xinhua) -- China had invested 360
billion yuan (about 52.7 billion U.S. dollars) in post-earthquake reconstruction
as of April, one-third of the planned total, and hoped to complete all work
within two years, a government official said here Friday.
According to Mu Hong, vice director of China's
National Development and Reform Commission, most rebuilding of basic housing and
infrastructure had begun and shown considerable progress. Full story
CHENGDU, April 24 (Xinhua) -- For Huang Zhongmo, a
farmer in Dacheng village of Mianzhu city whose life was devastated by a strong
8.0-magnitude earthquake in last May, the simple dream of lounging leisurely on
a sofa in his 70-square-meter house is being fulfilled.
The family of the 56-year-old man moved into a new
permanent building on Friday, almost two months ahead of schedule. He is one of
the ten million Sichuan people whose homes were devastated by the quake.
Full story
BEIJING, May 7 -- The municipal government of
Southwest China's Chengdu city has released a report about the spending of
social donations after the May 12th earthquake last year.
The report says the city had received money donation,
equal to around 1 and half billion U.S. dollars by March. Full story
