People enjoy the warmer weather in Taiyanggong Park Thursday. The Chaoyang district park is one of Beijing's known emergency shelters. Photo: Guo Yingguang
By Fang Yunyu
The Beijing Municipal Earthquake Bureau has a worrisomely vague answer for those pondering what to do should a catastrophic earthquake strike the capital: just wait for your community residents' committee to guide you to your local emergency shelter.
The city's population had reached 19.72 million according to a July 2010 report from the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress. However, the capital's 32 emergency shelters can only accommodate 1.566 million people, according to the Beijing Municipal Commission of Urban Planning in November of that year.
Those shelters' locations are viewable on a map at the municipal government's official website, at ggaq.beijing.cn/bncs.
"I know we don't have enough emergency shelters, but we're planning to build another 300 between 2011 and 2015," said a spokesman from the earthquake bureau's emergency office surnamed Yang.
Yang said that Beijing actually now has "nearly 40" emergency shelters. However, the newest shelters are not on any public maps, and Yang said he was unsure of when the bureau might reveal their exact locations.
"We can't tell the public where they are," said a bureau publicity official surnamed Sun. "If everyone goes to those shelters, those places would be chaotic!"
"If an earthquake happens, residents should stay near their homes and wait for residents' committee workers to guide them where to go," Yang advised. "Police will surely be busy with other issues."
A 9.0 magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami devastated Japan's Tohoku region on March 11, killing thousands, and aftershocks continue to rock the region. The disaster came less than a month after a 6.3 magnitude quake shook Christchurch, New Zealand, leading to 182 fatalities as of Thursday, according to police there. Worldwide, people have begun to speculate on the stability of the ground beneath their feet.
"It's difficult to estimate whether an earthquake will strike the capital in the near future," said Shen Zhengkang, a professor of the School of Earth and Space Sciences at Peking University.
"Massive earthquakes can occur anywhere, anytime," he said, adding that there are a few geological faults around Beijing, but that "earthquake activity in the capital region is quite low in general."