Rescue & Aid

African ministers mourn China's earthquake victims

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2010-04-16 17:17

NAIROBI - African ministers attending the disaster risk conference in Nairobi on Friday observed a minute's silence in honor of victims of the strong earth quake that hit a western region of China.

A Kenyan delegate to the conference told Xinhua that as much as all rescue operation at disaster scenes are difficult undertakings, the salvage procedures vary in scope.

"Rescue operations on plateau areas like the one that happened in China are easier to undertake since the movement of sand is minimal thereby reducing chances of burying people compared to hilly areas where people are buried deep into the soil," Abach Namaa who is the Assistant Secretary in the Ministry of Special Programmes in Charge of Micro-Disasters told Xinhua.

"In the event of high casualties on a plateau area, this is due to high-rise buildings that collapse and bury people underneath the rubble."

Namaa said relocating citizens in disaster-hit plateau areas depends on the policies of a government as there are no global standard paradigms that guide the exercise.

"So many factors will determine relocation of victims, chief among them being the availability of land followed by the probability of other quakes hitting the same area."

He said like in all rescue operations, the safety of the injured must be factored into to avoid causing more casualties.

"Emergency teams must always give priority to the living. The injured persons ought to be tended to medically while those who survived unscathed should be evacuated to safer grounds. Doing this will reduce fatalities,' he said.

The strongest of the quakes in the mountainous area about 4,000 metres above sea level registered a magnitude of 6.9 by the US Geological Survey and 7.1 by China's earthquake administration.