Chengdu, the capital city of southwest China's Sichuan province, will soon begin construction of 35 well-equipped emergency shelters that can accommodate up to 1.1 million people at the same time, the Chengdu Municipal Bureau of Civil Affairs said on March 24.

Chengdu, which has a population of more than 10 million people, will spend 160 million yuan building the 35 shelters. The project will be completed by the end of September 2011, said Liu Changming, head of the disaster relief office under the city's civil affairs bureau on March 24.

The 35 shelters will be built in squares, parks, stadiums, greenbelts, schools, and other places that have wide and open space in the city proper and suburbs. In addition, three parking aprons will be built near three of the shelters.

The emergency shelters will have various functional areas and supporting facilities, including the tent camping area, high-voltage lines area, emergency supplies area, garbage collection and transferring area, clear emergency signs and accesses, emergency water supply system, medical and sanitation facilities, emergency toilets and emergency radios that can serve as a backup source of information. In addition, medical centers, parking lots, bathing facilities and ventilation facilities will also be built in these shelters.

Liu said that the initial plan of building emergency shelters was actually brought forward before the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. The municipal government revised and improved the plan based on the national standards for emergency shelters.