BEIJING – China will strengthen the system it uses to mitigate the
harm caused by rural disasters and to issue early warnings about impending danger.A
senior officials said those changes are coming because places in the
countryside are still often hit hard by disasters.”The establishment of a
comprehensive system for preventing and forecasting natural disasters in rural
areas will be on top of the government’s agenda,” Zheng GuoguangItalian Serie A football shirts , head of the China Metrological Administration, said at a news
conference held by the State Council Information Office on Wednesday.He said
people living in vast rural regions are more vulnerable to natural disasters
because they lack the equipment and knowledge needed to cope effectively with
such hardships.From January to June, natural disasters harmed about 290 million
people in China, killing 449 of them, according to the latest statistics from
the Ministry of Civil Affairs.
Zheng said about 90 percent of the victims of lightning
strikes are from the countryside.Lightning killed about 15 people in 21 of China’s
provinces and autonomous regions from June 1 to June 25.”By building protection
towers and pavilions, where farmers can seek shelter during thunderstorms, the
number of deaths caused by lightning strikes has been dramatically reduced in
2010 by about 60 percent below what it was in 2007,” Zheng said cheap football shirts.In 2007,
about 744 people in China died from lightning strikes and 585 others were
injured. Those numbers meant lightning was the third most deadly natural
disaster that could occur in the country, following floods and mudslides in
that regard, Xinhua News Agency reported.As part of the new plan for disaster
response, more than 22,000 weather service stations have been built in China
and 437,000 rural weather messengers disseminate disaster warnings to rural
residents. They now provide service to AC Milan football shirt nearly 85 percent of the country’s rural regions, according to
statistics from the administration.Even with these changes aimed at preventing
disasters in the countryside, Zheng said China won’t be able to adequately
guarantee public safety and prevent serious economic losses without having a
more efficient way to issue early warnings.
According to a document released in July by the central government,
China, by the end of 2015, will be able to release warnings from 15 minutes to
30 minutes in advance of most bad storms and will be able to reach 90 percent
of the population using early warnings.Zheng said the chief barrier to putting
such information out even faster lies in the complicated process by which such
alerts are approved. He said at least 20 minutes are needed to promulgate early
warnings through mobile phones.Zheng Milan shirt said
the government will establish a fast track for approving the release of
disaster alerts and that system will be used at times when extremely bad
weather seems to be impending. He said authorities must also work to coordinate
the various means of transport and communication used in disaster
responses.Zheng noted that if someone were to now send text messages at once to
the 8 million people who use mobile phones in Beijing, the messages would take eight hours
to arrive.