(China Daily)
Updated: 2007-08-29 07:11

Summer is the season for natural calamities in China. Many of our memories of the summer months are dominated by such scenes as flood-swamped farmlands and villages and the sight of millions of civilians and soldiers buttressing the embankments of the country's major rivers with sandbags.

This summer has not been exceptional, as the weather has been extremely abnormal.

The Huaihe River, the country's third longest, has flooded at levels unseen since the catastrophic summer of 1954. Frequent rainstorms and typhoons have wreaked havoc in South China even as droughts have plagued East China.

According to statistics released by the Ministry of Water Resources yesterday, floods, landslides and mudflows triggered by torrential rains in June and August alone killed 1,138 people.

While lamenting the loss of human life, it is worth noting that the casualty numbers for this year are just about half of the average in normal years. The ministry also revealed that the economic losses caused by floods had been reduced by more than 12 percent from the previous annual average.

Of course, these numbers are not the result of blind luck.

We owe our gratitude to those who have been fighting the floods to protect people's lives and property. Our gratitude also goes to those who have sacrificed homes that were located in flood-relief areas to protect others.

Years of bitter experience have taught us to be better prepared for the fight against natural disasters. Massive amounts of funds and manual labor have been thrown at improving our ability to prevent floods on our major rivers and lakes in recent years. And an early warning and response system has been widely adopted by local governments.

This year, more advanced technologies have been introduced to increase the accuracy of extreme weather forecasts. Several localities have used short message services to warn residents of impending disastrous weather.

All these measures have made it easier to evacuate people in affected areas in a timely manner.

Against a backdrop of global climate change, the country should brace for more challenges ahead from Mother Nature. In the long run, unremitting efforts should be made to protect the environment and repair the damages to the ecosystem.

(China Daily 08/29/2007 page10)