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Beijing promises rain, rats won't spoil party
(Reuters)
Updated: 2007-07-20 13:58
BEIJING - Beijing has mapped out strategies to contain both rats and rain to ensure a dry, disease-free Games in 2008.
Authorities also promised the city's myriad lakes will be protected from major algae outbreaks that have blighted several lakes and reservoirs across the country and cut water supplies to millions.
During the Olympics, an arsenal of chemical-infused rockets, cannons and planes would be arranged on "three lines of defence" to blast threatening clouds out of the sky, the Beijing News said.
The lines would be arranged between 15 and 120 km (9 and 75 miles) from the city and would coordinate with weather manipulation bureaus in neighbouring Hebei province and Tianjin municipality.
"The sky above Beijing has a lot of planes. Our work needs to be done in a short time," the paper quoted Li Ruqing, weather station chief in Beijing's northwestern Haidian district, as saying.
Barrages from rocket-launchers, able to fire 400 shells to a height of 4,500 metres in about 10 minutes, could usually only operate for four to 10 minutes, Li said.
Beijing, which is chronically short of water, is well practised at blasting clouds to prompt a much-needed downpour.
The city's 26 rain-making stations between 2003 and 2006 boosted local reservoirs an average of 212 mm (8.35 in) of rain water, or 12 to 15 percent, according to Zhang Qiang, a vice-director at Beijing's weather manipulation office.
Rain-prevention techniques, however, are still in the testing phase.
Authorities will set up another three rocket-launchers and cannons in the city's Fangshan district to plug a gap in the city's cloud defences, Qiang said.
Rat-free Games
Fortress Beijing is now also protected from a potential invasion of disease-carrying rats, the paper said in a separate report.
Plague control units have been set up at nine different points in the city including the airport and railway stations, and working groups formed to carry out "plague outbreak control exercises", the paper said.
"Although Beijing has not yet had an outbreak of rodent-borne disease, in recent years the situation in surrounding provinces like Hebei and Inner Mongolia has been relatively serious," the paper quoted the city's health bureau chief Jin Dapeng as saying.
The unveiling of the new control system comes in the wake of a 2-billion-strong plague of rats caused by rising flood-waters in southern Hunan province's Dongting Lake.
Beijing will also inspect some 876 drainage pipes and add 22,500 tonnes of aquatic organisms to 18 "vulnerable" bodies of water, the paper said, after reports emerged of minor algae outbreaks in some of the city's lakes.
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