A total of 2.48 million people living in earthquake zones in
northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have moved
into new quake-proof homes in the last two years, a local
government official said on Wednesday.
The national program launched two years ago has seen 596,000
quake-proof homes built in 88 counties and cities in this
westernmost region of China, said Nuerlan Abudumanjin, vice
chairman of the regional government, at a national meeting on
quake-proof housing in rural areas which closed here on
Wednesday.
By the end of last year, the region had spent 11.745 billion
yuan (US$1.46 billion) on building of quake-proof housing, of
which, 869 million yuan was allocated by the central and local
governments and 10.2 billion yuan was raised by farmers and
herders.
The new homes had survived an earthquake measuring 6.2 on the
Richter scale in Wushi County, and a 5.2 quake in Pishan and Moyu
counties last year, Abudumanjin said.
Xinjiang is a quake-prone region with 105 earthquakes measuring
6 and above reported since the beginning of the last century. A
quake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale on Feb. 24, 2003, left 268
people dead and caused an economic loss of 1.37 billion yuan in
Bachu and Jiashi counties.
Eighteen academicians with the Chinese Academy of Sciences and
Chinese Academy of Engineering appealed to the government in 2004
to launch a project to rebuild rural homes to improve their ability
to withstand quakes. Xinjiang began the project in the same
year.
The project has since been implemented in more than 19
provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions on China's
mainland.
Two years ago, Xinjiang had 2 million rural families with 8
million people or 80 percent of the region's rural population,
living in houses with mud walls, Abudumanjin said.
Xinjiang had adopted a series of preferential policies to
encourage farmers and herders to rebuild their homes.
Each of the region's 720,000 poverty-stricken rural families
were granted 2,000 yuan in subsidies and those who faced serious
financial burdens were each given 3,000 yuan to rebuild their
homes.
The government standard requires quake-proof houses to be
constructed of brick and concrete or reinforced concrete. The
government also set a price for building materials to protect the
interest of farmers and herders.
All the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions on the
Chinese mainland have reported earthquakes measuring 5 or above on
the Richter scale in the last 100 years.
"The collapse of rural houses in natural disasters such as
earthquakes, typhoons, floods and landslides is the major cause of
fatalities and loss of property," said Liu Yuchen, deputy director
of China Seismological Bureau.
"This has much to do with the irrational location and poor
structure of houses, and poor quality materials used to build rural
houses," Liu told the national meeting on quake-proof housing.
The new rural houses were more durable in quakes measuring 6 on
the Richter scale, Liu said.
The national project aimed to protect life and property and
improve the living standards of the people, said Huang Wei, Vice
Minister of Construction.
Xinjiang will build quake-proof houses for six million more
rural people by the end of 2010, Abudumanjin said.
(Xinhua News Agency June 22, 2006)
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