North China gets early-warning system for quakes

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An earthquake early warning system developed by a private research organization has been installed in Beijing and its surrounding areas, and testing of the system has already begun.

"The installation was carried out in schools, communities and township government buildings in cities after the Wenchuan earthquake in Sichuan province" in 2008, said Wang Dun, director of the Institute of Care-Life, a nongovernmental organization that conducts research on quakes.

The organization, in Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu, provided the technology for the system.

"If a quake hits any of the cities, others will receive early warnings from the system within seven seconds," Wang said

The system covers 130,000 square km in the Beijing and Tianjin municipalities as well as neighboring Hebei province and others nearby, Wang said.

The China Earthquake Administration said Wang's institute is a private organization and its quake predictions are not official, adding that China is planning to build a national earthquake monitoring and warning system in five years.

North China has seen recent violent seismic activity, including an 8.2-magnitude earthquake in 1976 that killed more than 242,000 people in Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin, one of the deadliest calamities in human history.

The country started to pay attention to early earthquake warnings after the 8.0-magnitude Wenchuan earthquake, which killed nearly 70,000 people. Many other countries, including Japan, Mexico and Turkey, launched such systems much earlier, said Chen Huizhong, a research fellow with the administration's Institute of Geophysics.

A real-time system gives warnings within seconds after a quake and can save lives in quakes with a magnitude of 6.0 or higher because the warnings, transmitted via radio waves, travel faster than seismic waves.

Fifteen provinces and municipalities have installed Wang's system, covering 910,000 sq km, he said.

About the broadcaster:

Anne Ruisi is an editor at China Daily online with more than 30 years of experience as a newspaper editor and reporter. She has worked at newspapers in the U.S., including The Birmingham News in Alabama and City Newspaper of Rochester, N.Y.