This study analyzes the exposure of energy and transport assets in Asia and the Pacific to climate change and earthquake hazards and highlights how multi-hazard assessment can help strengthen the resilience
China began three days of national mourning on Monday for more than 30,000 victims of an earthquake that struck a week ago. Public entertainment will be suspended, flags kept at half-mast and a three-minute silence observed to mark exactly a week since the quake, the government said. The national flag in Tiananmen Square in central Beijing flew at half mast after a ceremony at dawn. The Olympic torch relay, currently on its domestic leg ahead of the Aug. 8 opening in Beijing, will likewise be suspended for three days.
Thousands of persons are being evacuated from around a lake and a river at risk of bursting in south-west China's earthquake-affected zone, said relief officials on Saturday. The disaster relief headquarters in the Beichuan County said it received reports of water levels reaching danger point at the Laoyingyan section of the Qianjiang River on Saturday. The river has been blocked by landslips caused by the earthquake. "It hasn't burst yet, but we asked people to leave because we need to prepare for the worst,' said an official.
The most powerful earthquake in China since 1950 shows the nation's insurance industry is decades behind those of the world's biggest economies. Just 5 per cent of the more than $20 billion of damages from the quake in Sichuan province is covered by insurance, according to estimates from an official at the China Insurance Regulatory Commission, who declined to be identified.
The focus in Asia is now on the earthquake that killed untold thousands in China this week. It's worth pausing for a moment to consider how that country's biggest quake in 58 years offers a reason for optimism. The contrast between China's impressive relief efforts and Myanmar's shameful failure to allow the rapid delivery of international aid after this month's cyclone is as huge as it is telling. And China's response differs markedly from how it dealt with an earthquake that killed 250,000 people in 1976 in the northeastern city of Tangshan.
China's main centers for designing, making and storing nuclear arms lie in the shattered earthquake zone, leading Western experts to look for signs of any damage that might allow radioactivity to escape. A senior federal official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the issue, said the United States was using spy satellites and other means to try to monitor the sprawling nuclear plants. "There appear to be no immediate concerns," the official said.
CHENGDU, China: Can earthquakes be predicted, their destructive impact forewarned? Most scientists would say no. But if some insistent Chinese bloggers are to be believed, nature provided enough warning to have saved many of those who perished this week. In the days before the deadly earthquake shook much of mountainous Sichuan Province, their stories go, ponds inexplicably drained, cows flung themselves against their enclosures and swarms of toads invaded the streets of a town that was later devastated by the quake.
BEIJING: Four days after a powerful earthquake devastated a mountainous region of southwestern China, the nation's massive rescue and relief effort continued Friday, even though the hope of finding new survivors was dimming. Remarkably, relief officials said that they had rescued a child buried alive in the ruins of a middle school late Thursday, about 80 hours after the quake struck, and had also detected the sounds of several other children who could be trapped there.
Turn greenhouse gases to stone? Transform them into a treacle-like liquid deep under the seabed? The ideas may sound like far-fetched schemes from an alchemist's notebook but scientists are pursuing them as many countries prepare to bury captured greenhouse gases in coming years as part of the fight against global warming. Analysts say the search for a suitable technology could become a $150 billion-plus market. But a big worry is that gases may leak from badly chosen underground sites, perhaps jolted open by an earthquake.
Two natural disasters; two very different responses. We look first at the government's response to the earthquake in China, then at poor Myanmar AP "DON'T cry, don't cry. It's a disaster, and you've survived,' China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, told weeping orphans in a town almost flattened by the country's worst natural disaster in more than 30 years. Mr Wen's awkward words may have done little to calm the bereaved children. But amid the huge destruction caused by the earthquake of May 12th, China's leaders thus far have scored some unusual public-relations successes.
China has shown up Myanmar's generals. But it is not too late for outsiders to help the Burmese Eyevine
