Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu called on the country's farmers on
Wednesday to build well-designed houses on secure sites in order to
prevent casualties and damage in natural disasters, including
earthquakes.
Addressing a national meeting on earthquake damage prevention in
rural residential housing construction, Hui said the collapse of
vulnerable rural houses was major factor behind the heavy loss of
life and property in natural calamities, such as earthquakes,
storms, floods and landslides.
Hui said lessons should be learned from the past by improving
the quake-resistant capability of rural houses and setting up a
mechanism to provide technological services for the rural
areas.
Even minor earthquakes had caused major disasters in rural
China, Hui acknowledged.
He blamed uninformed site selection, design and construction
techniques, and poor quality materials for the vulnerability to
disasters.
He said farmers should be advised to build their homes away from
areas vulnerable to natural disasters, such as storms, floods,
landslides, mud and rock flows and heavy rain.
The government had launched safe rural housing demonstration
projects in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and 10 other
provincial areas since 2004, he said.
(Xinhua News Agency June 22, 2006)