Early quake warnings on TV cover an additional 5 million

The Institute of Care-Life in Chengdu, Sichuan province, announced Thursday it would provide early earthquake warnings through television to an additional 5 million people in 11 cities and counties in the province.

The move brought the number of people in the province covered by early earthquake warnings via TV to 5.3 million, said institute head Wang Tun.

After a major earthquake takes place somewhere else, TV viewers in 11 cities and counties in Deyang, Yibin, Mianyang and Chengdu as well as Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture would see the warning on the TV screen that seismic waves would arrive within a certain number of seconds. Then they could escape from their homes, Wang said.

The institute's opening of early earthquake warnings to 5 million TV viewers on Thursday was in partnership with Sichuan Cable TV Network.

The collaboration started after the company learned TV viewers in Wenchuan county in Sichuan saw an early earthquake warning 40 minutes before seismic waves from the Jiuzhaigou earthquake in Sichuan arrived.

Twenty-five people died and 493 were injured in the magnitude-7.0 Jiuzhaigou earthquake on August 8. Together with TV viewers in Beichuan and Maoxian counties in Sichuan, those in Wenchuan started benefiting in 2012 from early earthquake warning services on TV provided by Wang's institute.China began developing early earthquake warnings after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008 killed 69,226 people and left 17,923 missing.

A real-time system providing warnings seconds after an earthquake occurs can save lives because the warnings are transmitted via radio waves, which move faster than seismic waves through the ground.

Radio waves travel at 300,000 kilometers per second, while seismic waves travel at 3 to 6 kilometers per second.

People who live in nearby areas may escape before the seismic waves arrive, according to Chen Huizhong, a senior research fellow with the Institute of Geophysics under the China Earthquake Administration.