Bomb shelters offer protection from heat
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E-mail China Daily, July 10, 2012
In many cities of East and Central China, air-raid shelters have a new function: sheltering residents from the ongoing heat wave.
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Residents enjoy the coolness in an air-raid shelter near Wushan Square in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, on Monday. Li Zhong / for China Daily |
Cities such as Hangzhou, Hefei, Luoyang and Nanjing have opened their underground shelters to the public for free, as some residents who cannot afford air conditioning, including retirees, students on summer breaks, and migrant workers and their families, seek shelter from the heat.
The Beijing-based National Meteorological Center reported that the heat wave will continue to scorch many parts of China in the coming two days.
The provinces of Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Sichuan are sweltering in temperatures higher than 35 C, with the mercury possibly hitting above 37 C in some regions.
Outdoor activities should be avoided at high-temperature periods such as the early afternoon, and residents were advised to take necessary sunstroke prevention measures, the center said on Monday.
Many cities opened their air-defense projects to residents after equipping them with necessary service facilities and even arranging folk-art performances to entertain the guests.
Across China, hundreds of thousands of bomb shelters were built in the 1960s and 1970s as a defense against possible Soviet air raids. Many have since been torn down to make way for the cities' sprawling subway networks, while others were used as storage areas or parking lots, or rented out by governments.
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