Early alerts help save lives in quake-prone areas

Southeast China is in the vanguard of advanced safety measures. Aybek Askhar reports from Xiamen, Fujian.

The magnitude 6 earthquake that hit Yibin in the southwestern province of Sichuan on June 17 brought back distressing memories for Fan Chunmei, a businesswoman in Fujian province, as she recalled an earthquake that struck her hometown of Nantou, Taiwan, in 1999.

"Five days after the earthquake, I was on my way back to Nantou. As I drove along a mountain road, I saw many empty coffins in an open space and there was a big freezer on one side. Employees of the local funeral parlor told me that there were more than 2,000 unclaimed bodies in that freezer," she said.