2016年CRI China: increasing people's awareness and abilities of disaster prevention（在线收听）

Natural disasters across China this year have killed at least 1,074 people with 270 others still missing, according to the Ministry of Civil Affairs.

Deputy head of the disaster relief department of the ministry, Yang Xiaodong said that the most notable events included floods, strong winds, hailstorms and a range of geological disasters.

"The loss since this June accounts for 60 to 90 percent of the total loss caused by natural disasters this year. The provinces of east China's Anhui, Jiangsu and Jiangxi, southeast China's Fujian, southwest China's Guizhou, north China's Hebei, and Central China's Hubei, were the hardest hit."

According to the ministry, since June, natural disasters have left 833 people dead and 233 people missing, the largest number of casualties in the same period since 2011.

According to the experts, the most efficient way to reduce the loss caused by disasters is to increase people's awareness and abilities of disaster prevention.

Liu Chang is a police officer at Zhoushan in east China's Zhejiang province who just gave a speech about relief and self-relief during disasters. He said:

"We keep giving safety education to the people and organizations in the area, and carrying out exercises. Once a disaster occurs, people are able to minimize their loss."

In Altay in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China, army soldiers often organize the students in local schools to participate in earthquake drills. Ning Panpan is a middle school student.

"Through the practice, we improve our skills in self-rescue and escape. When an earthquake occurs, the most important thing is to keep calm."

Shan Chunchang is an expert at China National Committee for Disaster Reduction who believes that disaster relief exercises are an effective way to improve people's abilities of self-rescue and self-protection.

"Exercises are very good means of raising public awareness and relief headquarters staff's ability to handle emergencies. We propose promoting the exercises into factories, schools, countryside, communities and families. This will improve each individual's self-help and mutual aid capabilities. In addition, in the course of the exercises, a variety of mechanisms will be running together, and will be improved and perfected in a walkthrough."

China is one of the country’s most prone to natural disasters. Now the government is working on polishing the mechanism for coordinating and integrating relief efforts and improving the laws, regulations and related policies concerning disaster reduction, as well as enhancing disaster public awareness.

For CRI, I am Chi Huiguang.