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Plan urges Asian area to tackle disaster risk
By Wu Chong (China Daily)
Updated: 2005-09-30 06:01

Asian countries were called on to make disaster reduction strategies an integral part of national planning at the conclusion of the Asian Conference on Disaster Reduction yesterday in Beijing.

The conference passed the Beijing Action for Disaster Risk Reduction in Asia to enhance regional collaboration. Five priority areas were singled out as points where Asian countries should focus their disaster reduction efforts. These included enhancing early warning systems and including disaster reduction programmes in national budgets. Community-based strategies were particularly encouraged.

"It's the people hit by the disasters who suffer most. It's best if those people know how they can help themselves before rescuers to arrive," said Gao Jianguo, an expert with the China Seismological Bureau.

Fang Zhiyong, a division chief with the Ministry of Civil Affairs, said China will launch a nationwide campaign to advocate the importance of disaster reduction.

In cities, the first step will be to select 100 model communities where such education is carried out particularly well. "Their experience will be introduced to other communities afterwards," said Fang.

In rural areas, schools will become the educational base, through which students obtain relevant knowledge. "They can then pass on the information to their parents and relatives," Fang said.

A recent widespread blackout in South China's Hainan Province, which reported economic losses of 9.1 billion yuan (US$1.1 billion) from Damrey, exposed serious weaknesses in the island's obsolete power grid, a problem shared by many other areas.

(China Daily 09/30/2005 page2)



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