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New strategies needed to battle future shocks

By Tang Xuepeng (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-05-30 08:23

The losses from the quake in Sichuan keep mounting. Nearly 70,000 are confirmed dead, nearly 20,000 remain missing and more than 360,000 were hurt by now. The losses in financial terms are hard to estimate at this moment.

China has been one of the countries suffering most from earthquakes. In the 20th century, 35 percent of the earthquakes with their epicenter located in continents and measuring over 7 magnitude took place on the Chinese soil. In the same century, 1.2 million people died in earthquakes around the world and 600,000 of them were Chinese.

The geological structure of China is the primary reason behind the lingering earthquake nightmare. Two of the most active seismic belts of the world, the circum-Pacific seismic belt and the Mediterranean seismic belt, cover part of the Chinese territory.

On top of that, the high population density in China makes the quake more destructive.

But besides these unchangeable elements, there is another important aspect that we can improve to reduce the threat of earthquakes to our society: view the earthquake from a new perspective and design an integrated system to protect ourselves from the tremors.

China is engaged in full-speed urbanization. By the year 2020, 57 percent of the country's population would live in cities. The already unbalanced population distribution among different parts of the country will be further distorted.

With the high population density in urban areas mounting even more, it is, therefore, inevitable that cities get more attention in the country's overall plan of curbing threats from earthquakes.

In our current model of seismic hazard prevention, which was developed after the Tangshan earthquake in 1976, the focus was put on improving the resistance of houses to the destruction caused by earthquakes.

Such a model would not apply to a highly urbanized country with many populous cities.

Our neighboring country, Japan, has a good lesson to offer as a country seeing both frequent earthquakes and a high population density. According to their applied researches, the seismic hazard prevention should be integrated with the urbanization strategy.

In the early stage of urbanization, Japan paid a lot of attention to making their constructions more resistant to the seismic activities. But they soon learnt that the technologies for modifying construction of buildings were not the key to protecting people's lives.

In 1964, the earthquake in Niigata of Japan claimed the lives of many people and caused huge financial losses. Instead of collapsing, the battered constructions subsided or inclined. The researchers found the foundation of these buildings had been rocked or severely damaged by the quake.

Therefore, they found it inadequate to make the structures more resistant to quakes. The geological situation of the city, like the location of active faults, should be included in working out local plan of earthquake-readiness.

In other words, a comprehensive inspection in geographic and geological terms should take an important position in the urbanization strategy. When necessary, administrative means could be used to change the regional plan so that cities could get sustainable development free from foreseeable natural threats.

After seeing towns in deep valleys buried within minutes of the quake, it is easy to understand such governmental intervention is necessary. In the quake-prone areas, the urbanization process should not be solely driven by the historical track of development, the free market or the choice of industrialization.

It is a commonly accepted opinion among scientists that it is impossible, at this moment, to predict the specific time and location of earthquakes. Therefore, the State emergency plan in case of an earthquake relates to containing its losses as much as possible. And the emergency plans should be fixed by different social institutions with their contingency measures. All these plans should be coordinated.

Once the government releases information on the quake, different units should initiate their emergency plan accordingly to cover the majority. The release of timely and accurate information would lend a strong hand to controlling secondary disasters, like fires in urban areas caused by gas or electricity leakage.

It has been proven in the Wenchuan earthquake that the truth could put out the rumors as long as the information is released transparently. And the moves and quick responses by the Chinese government have won unanimous applause from the international community .

After this tremor, it is also clear that improvements must be made to China's scheme for sharing disaster losses. By now, relief and reconstruction in the quake zones are mostly made at the expense of the central government.

Doubtless, it is unrealistic to rely on commercial insurance firms to offer big sums of compensation in economically underdeveloped areas, like Wenchuan, for the very limited penetration of commercial insurance there.

Moreover, there is no catastrophe insurance in China, which covers the risks of earthquakes. The insurers think such insurance is not profitable and the occurrence of an earthquake is impossible to calculate, making the insurance commercially unviable.

A practical option for us is to establish share-holding companies for catastrophe insurance. The State should be the majority holder of the companies and the commercial insurers should be encouraged to participate, either as minority holders or as business executive institutions. And the catastrophe insurance might be compulsory for property owners.

Instead of making profits, these catastrophe insurance companies could watch over their clients, such as by charging higher on the buildings with lesser resistance to quake damages. Thus the whole society could become more resistant to earthquakes or other natural disasters.

The author is a senior editor with 21st Century Business Herald

(China Daily 05/30/2008 page8)