CHINA> News
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CHINA> News
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China launches campaign against natural disasters
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-10 10:11 BEIJING -- 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 or 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. 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.
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. |
