The plan, made public early this week, lists 29 kinds of emergencies that Beijing, an international metropolis with a population of 15 million, might face in the next five years.

Volunteers with the emergency response project bear a stretcher with a "wounded" person out of a residential building in an anti-earthquake drill in a community in Chongwen District, Beijing.[China Daily]

Totally 13 command headquarters to deal with each of these emergencies have been set up and will begin operating by the end of this month. The municipal government and the city's 18 districts and counties have also set up emergency response centres.

A co-ordination mechanism is being built among municipal and district-level centres and the 13 command headquarters, called the "three-level emergency response mechanism," according to Lu Mingqi, a senior official with the Beijing Municipal Government who is involved in drafting the plan.

Lu, speaking at an international Beijing Olympics crisis management and emergency response symposium, revealed that Beijing will set up hotlines to accept emergency and non-emergency reports.

Like the 911 number in the United State to deal with emergencies, Beijing's 110 hotline will be dealing with crime, fires, traffic accidents and all other emergencies. The number is used exclusively for reporting crimes at present.

A 12345 hotline will become the non-emergency hotline like number of 311 in the United States.

"The three-level emergency response mechanism and the two hotlines jointly constitute the basic framework of Beijing's emergency response system, which was built after the outbreak of SARS in 2003," Lu told China Daily on the sidelines of the symposium.

Although the new emergency response and disaster relief plan is part of the city's 11th Five-Year Plan (2006-2010) and its goals are set to be achieved in 2010, Olympic security is the principal concern.

For instance, a citywide computer surveillance network will be set up and put into operation ahead of the Games.

At present, more than 260,000 hidden cameras have been installed around the city, 94 per cent located in financial institutions, hotels, schools and residential communities, according to statistics from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Public Security.

Wang Angsheng, an emergency management expert with the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said information is the sine qua non of emergency response.

Wang, also an advisor to the municipal emergency response centre, said by the end of this year all the city's metro lines, overpasses, underground passages and other public places will have cameras installed. The images from the surveillance network will be integrated into one information analysis platform by the end of 2007, and the information will be shared by the emergency response centres at all three levels.

The city will also set up emergency relief centres at every Olympic Games venue before 2008, according to the plan.

It says the city plans to build more than 100 emergency relief centres capable of accommodating 50,000 to 100,000 people each throughout the capital before 2010.

Key venues including the Olympic park, where the main Olympic stadium is located, and the Olympic village, where athletes competing in the 2008 Games will stay, will receive their attendant relief centres first.

Beijing already has 28 emergency relief centres capable of sheltering up to 1.7 million people.

Izumi Harada, from the Institute for International Socio-Economic Studies in Japan, said Beijing's Olympics organizers should step up efforts to remove potential threats from terrorist attacks, safety incidents in and around the venues, food poisoning disasters and computer hackers.

Harada, attending the international forum on crisis management and emergency response of Beijing Olympics last week, said the emergency management of the Beijing Olympic Games needed to adopt a pre-emptive strategy using state of the art information technology.

Hou Xinyi, deputy director of the technology department of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG), said the key to security lies in the use of technology.

"Athens introduced a number of hi-tech devices in the 2004 Games, but a large part of them were left unused," Hou said. "So we should strengthen our personnel training to efficiently use our hardware."

In a latest development, Beijing is planning to install not only monitor cameras and but also shield doors to prevent waiting passengers falling off onto the rail, according to a report on BOCOG website.

The move comes after two successive accidents that two persons fell down onto the rail on October 18 and October 23 respectively.

"The No 1 and No 2 Line of the subway are undergoing an overall restructuring with high-tech equipment to strengthen safety measures," said Zhan Minghui, deputy manager of the Beijing Subway, adding that more subway staff members are dispatched on each station to remind waiting passengers not to cross "the yellow safety line".

Zhan was quoted as saying that except a few suicide attempts, most subway falling victims had stepped out of the safety line to pick up falling articles or just out of curiosity.

"One would get a deadly electric shock if he fell onto the rail and touched the 825-volt high-tension electric track. The scenario is worse when a train is arriving. Even when the driver immediately activates the emergency brake, the train would still slide for about 100 meters before stopping, often causing miserable deaths," said Zhan, adding that suspended subway service would add great pressure to road traffic.

Zhan said after restructuring, monitor cameras will cover the whole platforms and shield doors will prevent passengers from crossing over the safety lines.

(China Daily 10/27/2006 page5)