A regional warning system to monitor landslides and mudslides has been built up and extended along the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, a region that is seriously plagued with geographical disasters.

The system, made up of one central monitoring station, 12 sub-stations, 58 early warning spots and 19 local monitoring spots, has helped in landslide-related research in four selected watersheds (or small river systems), officials and experts said at a conference yesterday.

Over the past decade, since the system was set up in 1991, over 110 million yuan (US$13.2 million) worth of direct economic losses, possibly caused by landslides and mudflows upper reaches of the Yangtze River, have been averted by the effective forecasting of the system.

The system has successfully reported 148 emergency landslides, and 33,100 local residents were evacuated as a result, according to the latest statistics.

Up to date, the system has been expanded to cover 38 landslide-prone counties, 14 prefectures and cities in the provinces of Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Hubei and the Chongqing Municipality, officials confirmed.

Zhang Xiaolin, a water official with the Yangtze River Water Resources Committee, was confident that "more than 113,400 square kilometers of landslide-prone areas or 20 percent of those facing serious threat of such serious geographic hazards upper reaches of the Yangtze, are now being monitored."

Zhang and many experts attended the conference and attributed the success to the efforts of the local governments in landslide-prone areas and the participation of tens of thousands of local residents.

To minimize the damage from landslides and mudslides, local authorities have mobilized thousands of locals to watch out for subtle signs of a disaster.

During 1998's catastrophic flood season, no casualties were reported in Wulong County of Chongqing, one of the worst areas plagued by chronic landslides, though 3,100 people lived in 125 reported landslide-prone spots.

Locals were out of the clenches of such geological hazards due to the help of massive observations and timely reporting about the calamities by residents themselves, a local official told China Daily.

(China Daily 10/15/2001)