首页  | 新闻播报

North China gets early-warning system for quakes

中国日报网 2014-05-13 10:18

分享到微信

Get Flash Player

Download

An earthquake early warning system developed by a private research organization has been installed in Beijing and its surrounding areas, and testing of the system has already begun.

"The installation was carried out in schools, communities and township government buildings in cities after the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province" in 2008, said Wang Dun, director of the Institute of Care-Life, a nongovernmental organization that conducts research on quakes.

The organization, in Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu, provided the technology for the system.

"If a quake hits any of the cities, others will receive early warnings from the system within seven seconds," Wang said

The system covers 130,000 square km in the Beijing and Tianjin municipalities as well as neighboring Hebei province and others nearby, Wang said.

The China Earthquake Administration said Wang's institute is a private organization and its quake predictions are not official, adding that China is planning to build a national earthquake monitoring and warning system in five years.

North China has seen recent violent seismic activity, including an 8.2-magnitude earthquake in 1976 that killed more than 242,000 people in Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin, one of the deadliest calamities in human history.

The country started to pay attention to early earthquake warnings after the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake, which killed nearly 70,000 people. Many other countries, including Japan, Mexico and Turkey, launched such systems much earlier, said Chen Huizhong, a research fellow with the administration's Institute of Geophysics.

A real-time system gives warnings within seconds after a quake and can save lives in quakes with a magnitude of 6.0 or higher because the warnings, transmitted via radio waves, travel faster than seismic waves.

Fifteen provinces and municipalities have installed Wang's system, covering 910,000 sq km, he said.

(中国日报网英语点津 Helen 编辑)

About the broadcaster:

Anne Ruisi is an editor at China Daily online with more than 30 years of experience as a newspaper editor and reporter. She has worked at newspapers in the U.S., including The Birmingham News in Alabama and City Newspaper of Rochester, N.Y.

中国日报网英语点津版权说明:凡注明来源为“中国日报网英语点津:XXX(署名)”的原创作品,除与中国日报网签署英语点津内容授权协议的网站外,其他任何网站或单位未经允许不得非法盗链、转载和使用,违者必究。如需使用,请与010-84883561联系;凡本网注明“来源:XXX(非英语点津)”的作品,均转载自其它媒体,目的在于传播更多信息,其他媒体如需转载,请与稿件来源方联系,如产生任何问题与本网无关;本网所发布的歌曲、电影片段,版权归原作者所有,仅供学习与研究,如果侵权,请提供版权证明,以便尽快删除。
本文相关阅读
5af95d3ba3103f6866ee845a

Earthquake relief aid mishandled

5af95d3ba3103f6866ee845a

Mobile phones can warn about earthquake

5af95d3ba3103f6866ee845a

Earthquake survivors fear aftershocks

人气排行
中国日报网 英语点津微信
中国日报网 双语小程序