A regional warning system to monitor landslides and mudslides has
been built up and extended along the upper reaches of the Yangtze
River, a region that is seriously plagued with geographical
disasters.
The system, made up of one central monitoring station, 12
sub-stations, 58 early warning spots and 19 local monitoring spots,
has helped in landslide-related research in four selected
watersheds (or small river systems), officials and experts said at
a conference yesterday.
Over the past decade, since the system was set up in 1991, over 110
million yuan (US$13.2 million) worth of direct economic losses,
possibly caused by landslides and mudflows upper reaches of the
Yangtze River, have been averted by the effective forecasting of
the system.
The system has successfully reported 148 emergency landslides, and
33,100 local residents were evacuated as a result, according to the
latest statistics.
Up
to date, the system has been expanded to cover 38 landslide-prone
counties, 14 prefectures and cities in the provinces of Yunnan,
Guizhou, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Hubei and the Chongqing
Municipality, officials confirmed.
Zhang Xiaolin, a water official with the Yangtze River Water
Resources Committee, was confident that "more than 113,400 square
kilometers of landslide-prone areas or 20 percent of those facing
serious threat of such serious geographic hazards upper reaches of
the Yangtze, are now being monitored."
Zhang and many experts attended the conference and attributed the
success to the efforts of the local governments in landslide-prone
areas and the participation of tens of thousands of local
residents.
To
minimize the damage from landslides and mudslides, local
authorities have mobilized thousands of locals to watch out for
subtle signs of a disaster.
During 1998's catastrophic flood season, no casualties were
reported in Wulong County of Chongqing, one of the worst areas
plagued by chronic landslides, though 3,100 people lived in 125
reported landslide-prone spots.
Locals were out of the clenches of such geological hazards due to
the help of massive observations and timely reporting about the
calamities by residents themselves, a local official told China
Daily.
(China Daily
10/15/2001)