[By Zhou Tao/Shanghai Daily]

My trip to Fukuoka, Japan during the National Day holiday last week was not for leisure, quite the contrary: it was all about disaster.

First, I got "trapped" in a smoke-filled, all-lights-out building and had to grope my way out. For the first time in my life I used an extinguisher to put out a fire. Then I went through a simulated magnitude-7 earthquake with the floor shaking violently under my chair.

These scary experiences were a prelude to an international symposium on creating disaster-resilient cities held by the UN Habitat Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific to observe the World Habitat Day.

The theme was appropriate since a spate of natural disasters has hit Asia this year, such as the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11, the rain-triggered mud slides in Seoul on July 27 and the huge floods in downtown Manila on September 27.

The forum discussed challenges in disaster prevention and mitigation as well as the experiences of different countries.

All participants agreed that education is vital for building disaster-prevention capacities at community levels and that the success of government anti-disaster measures hinges on public participation. This was the message from the forum.

A disaster-resilient city can limit the loss of life in the event of a catastrophe and quickly recover from damages.

Cities can ward off floods with adequate drainage systems and dikes, but they can't stop an earthquake. Reinforcement of weak structures, early warning, timely evacuation and well-planned reconstruction are needed.

Unlike Japan and the western and northern parts of China, Shanghai is less vulnerable to earthquakes. The city is about 250 kilometers west of the closest tectonic fault in the Yellow Sea, which occasionally experiences tremors, usually smaller than magnitude-5. The latest one was felt this past January 12. But the city is prone to typhoons, rainstorms, tidal waves, dense fog (a cause of traffic accidents) and epidemics like SARS and bird flu.