By Michael Taylor
KUALA LUMPUR, May 11 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – One decade after an earthquake killed almost 70,000 people, China’s investment in disaster preparedness means a similar tragedy is unlikely, said experts who urged other Asian nations to follow suit.
The massive quake that rocked China’s southwestern province of Sichuan on the afternoon of May 12, 2008, left about 10,000 children dead, many buried under rubble when their schools collapsed.
With almost 5 million people homeless and facing a public backlash in the aftermath of the quake, China has since invested heavily to transform the way it prepares and responds to earthquakes, according to disaster experts.
“Out of the Sichuan tragedy has come huge progress,” said Loretta Hieber Girardet, Asia-Pacific chief for the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).
China has “taken very strong measures to ensure that the loss of life and economic losses would not be the same in a future earthquake,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Although China is the most earthquake-prone nation in Asia, other countries in the region – like the Philippines, Myanmar, Nepal, India, Indonesia and Japan – face similar threats.
Many of them are also experiencing unprecedented urbanisation, which experts say makes it vital that they improve their disaster preparedness and response capabilities.
“More and more people are living in hazard-prone areas or assets built along fault lines, which increases the risk,” said Arghya Sinha Roy, a disaster risk specialist at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) in Manila.
SICHUAN LEGACY
Over the last 50 years, China has experienced an average of three earthquakes per year, leaving 380,000 people dead and affecting more than 75 million people, according to the UNISDR.
In addition to the loss of lives and livelihoods, the U.N. agency estimates that the average annual cost due to future earthquakes in China will be about $7 billion.
Given that the Sichuan quake destroyed an estimated 1.5 million homes and 7,000 classrooms, two of the most critical steps China has since taken were to strictly enforce building codes and improve safety at schools, said UNISDR’s Girardet.
“The big cause of death and destruction in the Sichuan earthquake was the collapse of buildings that had been quite shabbily constructed,” she said.
As well as retrofitting and rebuilding many schools in quake-prone areas, China is educating children about the risks and hazards relating to quakes and what to do in a disaster.
In addition to regular school drills, Beijing has pledged more than $31 million over the next five years to develop seismic science and technology.
