Jun Wang: Chinese Policy of Disaster Prevention & Disaster Relief
------China Should Build UP the “Department of Disaster Prevention & Disaster Relief”
Picture: Mr. Jun Wang, chairman of China Democracy Party and China Democracy Party World Union and Proprietor of 《China Democracy Journal》took a picture in front of Capital Hill of U.S.A.
[Editor]” Chinese Policy of Disaster Prevention & Disaster Relief is written on May 31, 2008 and corrected on June 14, 2008 by Mr. Jun Wang, chairman of China Democracy Party and China Democracy Party World Union and Proprietor of 《China Democracy Journal》. The article pointed out that the government should consider establishing the department of Disaster Prevention & Disaster Relief. In state council established department of disaster prevention & disaster relief, in all provinces, autonomous regions and district-level, they should build up “Bureau of Disaster Prevention & Disaster Relief”. As for county-level, it is sure to select minority. The tasks of department of disaster prevention & disaster relief are detailed problems, covered from earthquake, fire disaster, water disaster, wind disaster to flu, from prediction, forecast to relief and rebuild, from fire control, police, medical to students, workers, citizens, farmers, no one exception. However, they make coordinate army and armed police rescue more efficient and crucial. Well-informed information, timely rescue, sufficient resource, accessible approaches and proper settlement are the constant and painstaking efforts of Department of Disaster Prevention & Disaster Relief. If we have such a professional department, people’s life and property safety and social security and stableness will be even more guaranteed.
Some people criticized that the policy of CCP is always “Disaster Prevention & Relief much more important than oral prevention.” CCP doesn’t allow raising questions, discussion problems and thus it’s impossible to solve problems, leading to the big disaster. Such earthquake as Sichuan Wenchuan, we can summarize a chain of bitter lessons.
I can remember that in August 2007, E-friend from Ji’nan, named Carmen Red Empire” suffered arrest due to the disaster disclosure. This miserable woman just turned to 23 and is inexperienced. She believed friends witness on the spot. People were drowned in the Yinzuo Underground Store in Ji’nan, due to flood. After it, Yinzuo was tightly blocked for a couple of days by the police, not allowing outside verifying the true situations. Although till now Yinzuo store has still not disclosed the incident progress and the whole original record, demonstrating what “Carmen Red Empire” said true, police prevented oral much more important than the flood.
As a matter of fact, concerning that incident, it is sure that people were drowned in Jinan, and it’s not a little figure. According to the authority of Jinan, at least 34 people were drowned. These miserable compatriots died of the flood in Jinan, but they shouldn’t have died. It is an extremely miserable and serious incident. As a result, nobody is responsible for this incident and even the authority doesn’t need to take over any responsibility. After “Carmen Red Empire” was arrested, the discussion of Jinan flood has totally transferred to Guoyou Wan. Nobody care about how and why compatriots died and who should be responsible for the incident.
I can’t help thinking of the Sichuan Earthquake last year, similarly!
Yongfeng Guo, the initiator of Chinese Citizen Monitoring Association currently pointed out that Sichuan Earthquake belongs to the natural disaster. However before the earthquake, they don’t adopt any effective precaution. Even related specialists in folklore have already forecasted the possibilities of great earthquake, and animals’ obvious indication occurred. However, under the great pressure of “Olympics”, in order to ensure the stableness of regime, especially for the successful relay of Olympic Torch, which is so called “Lucky Clouds”, our government firmly blocked the “Rumors” and brutally oppressed those who spread the “Rumors”, leading to more than 10 people arrested. As a result, thousands of lives were died.
Is Yongfeng Guo’s saying extreme? Not really. He has sufficient fact and basis. For example, Longnan Gansu, his hometown, it is one part of earthquake column. The center of the earthquake is class 8 and in Longnan is Class 7.8. In the earthquake center, every night it happened to occur 6 or 7 aftershocks. In Longnan it happened to occur 6 or 7 aftershocks. When his family called him and 90% if the houses in their village were totally razed to the ground, Yongfeng Guo’s family was located at the mountain foot. Although his house didn’t totally collapse, it belonged to dangerous house, with the wall destroyed, with the tiles fallen and roof frame sloped. Houses in villages nearby were not only razed to the ground, and a number of people died and injured. Luckily the earthquake occurred at 2:00 pm. All the villagers were went to the fields or went outside. Those who stayed at home luckily escaped in time.
After the earth shock, that the rescue workers were assigned late, the rescue equipment were old and out-of-date, the rescue workers’ professional skills were serious lag behind, on-site handwork extremely fell behind and etc. makes people annoyed. Furthermore, they understood themselves incapability, but they can do nothing and refused the rescue from other countries. Late, they have no alternative and reluctantly agree the rescue of foreign rescue teams. However, it has delayed the opportunities and a number of lives delay and not rescued in time. Perhaps those who died were died innocently; however can thousands of death people bring the realization of authorities?
Seeing huge amounts of houses collapse in disaster-stricken area of Gansu, I feel depressed. Even if these houses didn’t collapse, such kinds of poverty makes people feel bitter, doesn’t it? I have already couldn’t help seeing. Helpless old people and same sorrow, who don’t have hometown? Who don’t need to enjoy the rest of life? Poor students are studying in such kinds of broken classrooms? Our strength is limited, but we still need to initiate donation, due to boundless true love!”
Due to the disconnection of transportation and information, a couple of disaster-stricken area in Gansu was neglected by the outside world. Likewise Wenchuan Earthquake information were broadcasted and published in the first time, disaster situations in Wenxian located in Gansu were unknown by the outside world. A number of people in Gansu province were misguided for such a long time and they think that the disaster situations were not serious.
According to the figures provided by the Wenchuan County propaganda department, till May 20, in Beichuan earthquake, 94 died in Wenxian, 1083 were injured, and 110,000 houses were collapsed, making Gansu the most serious disaster-stricken area. If not because the disaster situations were not much more serious than Sichuan earthquake, we can’t judge by the rare great earthquake from China founded according to the listed figures.
However, when the disaster situations happened, statistics figure seems difficult to react the true situations. Let’s take an example of the death figure, in local area; originally the death figure reported is only 12 people. The government suffered denouncement and public thinks that the government conceals the disaster situations on purpose.
What the related officials said is obviously hard to accept. They think that earthquake is natural disaster. As local government, they don’t need to take over responsibilities. Hence, they don’t have motivation to conceal. A number of people verified that after the earthquake, Fanba village Wen County undoubtedly possesses basic-level leaders publicly reported the unserious disaster. Disaster situations “underestimation” doesn’t seem to only the basic-level leader. After the second day of disaster, Red Cross of Gansu Province once planned to donate Longnan one thousand quilts. However, before leaving, it was informed that disaster areas don’t need this. What about the fact? Due to the collapse of houses, some villagers in the remote mountain failed to take out one product.
Some journalists found in Wen County that after the seventh day of the earthquake on May 19, 2009, rescue tents started to be distributed to the victims, and it is far away from satisfactory. Such as Fanba village, according to the proportion of 15 victims per tent, the square meters are only 12 and at most 8 people live together. After the earthquake, more than seven hundred armed police assisted in rescuing villagers. When the journalists visited, most of the armed army has been arrived earlier than the journalists who are aimed to help victims snatch away grain under the collapsed houses. However, armed police’s good heart sometimes declined by the kind villagers, because villagers found that these police actually originally from village. One villager said that we don’t care the lack of our grain, but we can’t bear if these children hurt. Local residents in Wen County once spontaneously sent food to the army; as a result, they were declined.
Although local government has already done good job in this rescue, which is different from the attitudes towards government officials and policemen, the victims still feel dissatisfied. In Fanba village Wen County, due to the serious destroys of government building, they were forced to move out and work outside and put up an easy shed made of plastic membrane. As a result, the plastic shed was destroyed by the unsettled villagers. It is obvious that people were discontented with the government.
On May 19, 2008, the initial air shipment was shipped to Fanba Village by helicopter. Due to the temporary change of landing site, villagers in nearby village arrived in earlier. The military assigned by local government found and then had conflict with villagers. According to what the policemen in Fanba Village, the conflict reason is because villagers made a scramble for relief materials. However, other eyewitness said that as a matter of fact, villagers only helped move the materials from the helicopter and didn’t mean to scramble. It indicated that government lost confidence about the deeply-rooted confidence.
Furthermore, villagers indicated that they hadn’t seen the helicopter, mainly because of freshness. After the event, one villager who felt hurt found officials to “reason” leading to the hitting by them. When he was interviewed by our journalist, he was filled with worrying. They worried about the resentment by the local government and have been influenced the after-disaster work. However, local villagers were kind. Although they complained to the local government, they knew the local middle school would resume classes. They were willing to chop down their own bamboos, and feel free to help schools rebuild classrooms. It can clearly be seen that it is the government that neglect its duty rather than the sincere and rustic people.
Cheng Zhou from People’s University of China had a suggestion that China build up a “department of disaster prevention and relief”. I think this suggestion is pretty well. I hereby raise this suggest and offer it for reference.
As what he said, Tangshan great earthquake has shocked almost the whole nation, making people upset for quite a long time. People have gradually forgotten about the pain. However, 32 years later, one precedent Wenchuan great earthquake suddenly happened. It has not only shocked the whole country, but also shocked the whole world. People from the entire world gave us helping hands and they do concern about the quake, making the disaster relief in a rapid and effective progress. For example, the information disconnected in the quake-center area made them unreachable. The life detecting instrument failed to be displaced in time and then made a great number of victims lose the salvaged opportunities. People suddenly found that the needs for tens are startling and they produced rapidly. However, the “Yansai Lake” had been the new and huge difficult problem. Definitely, we showed such kinds of unfamiliarity and negligent preparation!
Hence, it is essential that we consider this great quake a “University of Disaster Prevention and Relief”! It is undoubtedly logical that our government should consider setting up a permanent department of disaster prevention and relief. The “Department of Disaster Prevention and Relief” should be set in State Council and in provinces, municipality, autonomous regions, and districts also should commonly build up “Bureau of Disaster Prevention and Relief”. In county-level, we surely should select minority important ones. The task of these departments concludes everything, such as earthquake, fire, water, wind disaster and epidemic disaster. From forecast, prediction, salvation and rebuilding, everything included. Everything can be exempted, including from fire control, public security, medical affairs, to students, workers, citizens and peasants. In addition, coordinator military and armed police play a vital part in relief.
The department of disaster prevention and relief should put an effort to the well-informed information, timely relief, sufficient material, accessible roads, and appropriate placement. If we do have such kind a professional department, our life and property security and safe and stableness of our society will be further guaranteed!
Furthermore, I will supplement one point: still only this department is not sufficient. It also should guarantee the transparent and circulated information. Otherwise, even if we have more than one hundred such kinds of departments, they are still doing the black case work and fail to figure out any problem, leading to aggravating people’s tax burden and supporting a number of domineers. Hence, China firstly should open up restriction on newspaper licensing, enhance people’s right-to-know and make people have sufficient preparation of self-relief, mutual assistance, coordination relief and loss reduction.
We can figure out that this earthquake leads to news restriction loosing. It not only fails to bring out anarchy, but also impetuses unprecedented consolidation. That’s our people’s power! Our Government should trust the priceless power instead of arbitrarily destroying it.
Written on New York, U.S.A. on May 31, 2008
Amended on June 14, 2008
(Arthur, Chairman of China Democracy Party World Union)
Website：http://www.cdpwu.org
Cell：001-1-917-348-5230 Jun Wang
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