AS a growing portion of the world's population moves into ever larger cities, the threat of a major catastrophe caused by an earthquake gets bigger every year, according to delegates gathered yesterday in Shanghai for the Third International Workshop on Earthquakes and Megacities.
Some 200 experts and officials from home and abroad are in the city to attend the three-day gathering.
"At present, half of the world's population live in cities accounting for 3 percent of the Earth's land, and by 2025, the rate will rise to 80 percent," said Song Ruixiang, chief of the China Seismological Bureau.
"Thus, cities play a key part in our efforts to alleviate earthquake damage, especially in those megacities."
Zhu Shilong, of China's Seismological Bureau, said China needs to develop professional search and rescue abilities, as the country is located along the intersection of two global seismic belts.
China's worst modern-day earthquake happened on July 28, 1976 in Tangshan of Hebei Province. The quake, which registered 7.8 on the Richter scale, killed about 200,000 people out of the million people who lived in the city at the time.
(eastday.com November 1, 2002)
