CRI听力:The Sixth Disaster Prevention and Reduction Day

Reporter: To raise people's awareness on disaster prevention and self-rescue skills, China's National Commission for Disaster Reduction calls on governments and organizations to carry out drills from the past Saturday to this Friday.

A student at Beijing's Changping Second Middle School says she learned something practical from an emergency response drill on earthquakes.

"We can hide under the desk when an earthquake occurs, and leave the building when it's safe. Plus, I learned we should run against the flow of a landslide rather than follow it. I didn't know this before."

Shan Chunchang, deputy director of the expert committee for the National Commission for Disaster Reduction, says carrying out related drills is an effective way to popularize disaster prevention and reduction knowledge among the public.

"Drills are an effective way to improve people's ability to tackle disasters. Drills are advised to be promoted in factories, schools, government units and also rural areas."

Shan also emphasizes that central and local governments should design cities to better sustain disaster prevention and reduction, especially in the face of China's high-speed urbanization.

"The designs of our cities now are still focused on the ground, surface and instance effect, rather than the infrastructure underground and long-term design. Also, the government's disaster relief work still focuses on what needs be done after the disaster occurred, rather than preventing it. So during the urbanization process, more efforts are needed in the planning, design and quality of construction work in the cities."

Figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show that China's proportion of permanent urban residents stands at 53.7 percent. According to China's urbanization plan for 2014-2020, by 2020, China's ratio of permanent urban residents to total population should reach about 60 percent.

Thus, China's National Commission for Disaster Reduction calls on governments at all levels to better implement the disaster prevention and reduction work and perfect the emergency response contingency plan, in particular, the plans which are related to the new problems in the urbanization process, such as waterlogging in cities, as well as landslides, gas leaks and fires. Shan Chunchang says disaster in cities have new features.

"Disasters in cities usually cause sudden complications. They often trigger a series of reactions and the consequences may easily be magnified. The future disaster prevention and reduction work should be integrated with urbanization planning."

The Disaster Prevention and Reduction Day was set in 2009, after a devastating earthquake hit Sichuan and neighboring Gansu and Shaanxi provinces on May 12, 2008, leaving 87-thousand people either dead or missing.

For CRI, I am Li Dong.