Deputy PM Hai urges active response to natural disasters

Deputy Prime Minister Hoang Trung Hai has urged related ministries, sectors and localities to proactively minimise damages caused by natural disasters, particularly focusing on raising public awareness about dealing with abnormal weather events and natural disasters.

Chairing a meeting in Hanoi on Saturday to review preventing and combating natural disasters and search and rescue work in 2014, Deputy PM Hai said that local authorities should develop appropriate plans for prevention and control of disasters in the current situation of increasing complex weather events.

Illustration photo: Huu Chi

Reports at the meeting showed that disasters in 2014 occurred less in number and intensity than the average of previous years. There were five storms and three tropical depressions over the East Sea last year, of which three storms directly affected Vietnam.

However, heavy rains, flash floods, landslides, lightning and tornado leaft 133 people dead or missing, 145 injured, nearly 2,000 houses collapsed, 43,000 homes flooded and destroyed, and 230,000 ha of paddy and crop damaged. Estimated damages were valued at aproximately VND2.83 trillion (US$130.2 million).

Updating meteorological trends in the coming months of the rainy season, director of the National Centre for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting Hoang Duc Cuong said that in 2015, the weather seemed to be more complicated than in 2014 with about 9-10 storms occuring over the East Sea and about 4-5 ones directly affecting the mainland.

Hot weather will appear more frequently in the northern and central regions and flash floods plus landslides are likely to happen more than in 2014 in northern mountainous localities. The drought and water shortage in the south central may continue until September, while saltwater intrusion may extend from March to May in the southern region.

Deputy PM Hai urged consolidating the Steering Committees on Disaster Prevention and Search and Rescue at all levels, while strengthening implementation of projects on community awareness raising and community-based disaster risk management.

Regarding the ongoing harsh drought in the south central provinces and the Central Highlands, the deputy PM asked related authorities to guide locals to improve water use efficiency and restructure crops to cope with the more and more extreme weather.

He proposed key tasks in prevention and control of natural disasters in 2015 with focus on completing legal documents for coping with climate change and sea level rise, raising public awareness in the implementation of Law on Natural Disaster Prevention and Control and other concerned ones, and building flood maps due to sea level rise during powerful storm scenarios.

(Source: nhandan.org.vn)