With its unique geographical location and climate, Vietnam is often affected by natural disasters, especially storms, floods, landslides, etc. Therefore, ensuring people's rights when natural disasters and catastrophes occur is always a top priority in order to best protect people's lives and property and minimize the consequences caused by natural disasters.
 |
| Due to the impact of storm No. 3, many locations on national highways, provincial roads, and district roads were eroded, and some irrigation works in Lao Cai were damaged. (Source: Government Information) |
Proactive prevention and response
One of the important tasks of disaster prevention and control is to do a good job of prevention and response readiness, so as to be proactive in all situations.
In recent times, the work of forecasting natural disasters and catastrophes has always received special attention. Specifically, many policies, resolutions, directives, and conclusions have been issued to deal with natural disasters, catastrophes, and incidents. Directive No. 42-CT/TW dated March 24, 2020 of the Secretariat on strengthening the Party's leadership in the work of preventing, responding to, and overcoming the consequences of natural disasters is a guiding document, building a comprehensive strategy on natural disaster prevention, control, and climate change response.
In particular, the 2023 Civil Defense Law clearly stipulates the levels of civil defense, in order to respond promptly and effectively when the country faces potential risks, contributing to maintaining national security and stability. In addition, many Decrees and Decisions have been issued promptly to prevent, combat, and overcome the consequences of incidents, natural disasters, and catastrophes.
Recently, with storm No. 3, right from the time the storm formed and entered the East Sea, the Prime Minister directed to closely monitor the situation, accurately forecast the intensity and path of the storm, warn of the risk of floods, landslides and deploy emergency response solutions before, during and after the storm; issued 10 telegrams, established a Forward Command Center in Hai Phong city to direct regularly, continuously, resolutely and urgently to minimize damage.
Information and warnings on natural disasters, catastrophes, and incidents are timely and prompt; developments are regularly updated on all mass media (TV, Radio, Internet, social networks Facebook, Zalo, etc.), in many languages (Vietnamese, English, French, ethnic minority languages, and sign languages, etc.) to ensure that all people have access in many different forms.
According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, from 2016 to 2023, 843 automatic rain gauge stations and 16 automatic flood warning towers were installed in 48 provinces/cities nationwide; to date, the number of automatic rain gauge stations invested from socialized sources is nearly 1,400 stations. In 2023, about 40,207 news articles on natural disaster prevention were published; 38.2 million Zalo messages warning the community were sent to subscribers in affected areas; maintaining and strengthening communication, warnings on natural disaster prevention and control on websites, social networks, the Internet, etc.
Prevention is also reflected in urban and rural planning: construction of drainage systems, land planning and flood control works; construction and improvement of infrastructure works capable of withstanding natural disasters.
Organize conferences, training sessions, and workshops to improve community capacity in disaster prevention and control; practice plans and hypothetical situations so that people and authorities can always be ready to respond to any situation that may arise, and not be surprised or passive.
In 2023, there were 239 training courses, drills, and rescue training for 18,633 students from ministries, localities, military regions, army corps, and military branches. 10 international exercises were organized, 24 provincial and city-level exercises, 64 district-level exercises, 162 commune-level exercises to respond to natural disasters, incidents, and search and rescue with full participation of all forces.
| Putting the goal of protecting the lives, health and property of the People and the State above all, first of all to mobilize all resources of society and the State, especially the "4 on-site" motto for prevention and overcoming consequences" is one of the five conclusions of Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh at the online conference with ministries, branches and 26 provinces and cities to review, evaluate and draw lessons on the work of preventing, fighting and overcoming the consequences of storm No. 3. |
Rescue work is carried out urgently, quickly and safely. Whenever natural disasters, floods and landslides occur, the Party and State always pay close attention and direct rescue work. High-ranking leaders of the Party and State have directly visited the scene to inspect the situation and direct response, rescue and relief work.
Faced with the devastation and impact of Typhoon Yagi and heavy floods and landslides in the northern provinces in early September, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh personally inspected the situation, promptly, decisively and promptly directed the organization of rescue plans, search for missing victims, and relief for people in affected areas, minimizing human and property damage.
In 2023 alone, ministries, branches and localities mobilized 204,507 people/23,132 vehicles to respond and effectively handle 4,336 cases, rescuing 3,968 people and 207 vehicles; guided and supported the evacuation of 962,933 people and 201,799 vehicles from dangerous areas to safe places; called, counted and guided 328,227 ships/1,608,015 workers to know the developments and directions of storms and tropical depressions to proactively prevent them.
Relief and support work during and after natural disasters is always carried out in parallel and promptly so that people can soon stabilize their lives. Relief work includes: emergency relief of food and necessities; support for facilities, infrastructure, housing, etc. On September 28, 2024, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh directed ministries, branches and localities to focus all their efforts on supporting people to restore their lives and production, including urgently, urgently and seriously implementing 06 groups of solutions in Resolution No. 143/NQ-CP dated September 17, 2024 on key tasks and solutions to promptly overcome the consequences of storm No. 3 (Yagi).
In 2023, the Government provided 8,500 billion VND to 43 provinces and cities to overcome the consequences of natural disasters. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development provided 100 tons of rice seeds, 67 tons of corn seeds, 10 tons of vegetable seeds; 56 tons and 10,000 liters of chemicals to disinfect livestock, poultry and aquatic products for localities to promptly stabilize production.
External activities on natural disaster prevention and control have been promoted. In 2023, Vietnam will assume the role of Chair of the ASEAN Committee on Disaster Management (ACDM); coordinate with the ASEAN Secretariat and relevant agencies to organize the AMMDM Conference and related events with the theme "From Response to Early Action and Strengthening Resilience: ASEAN towards Global Leadership in Disaster Management", including: 4 Ministerial Conferences, 10 SOM meetings and 03 Regional Forums/Workshops, with a total of 14 delegations attending with over 200 delegates, including about 150 international delegates and 50 Vietnamese delegates.
 |
| Prime Minister inspects flood recovery work in Yen Bai city. (Source: VNA) |
Implement solutions synchronously and effectively
Extreme weather phenomena and natural disasters are occurring more frequently and with complex and unpredictable developments due to climate change, causing difficulties in forecasting, warning, supporting and overcoming consequences.
In fact, the specialized natural disaster warning system installed to monitor and supervise areas at high risk of natural disasters can hardly ensure comprehensiveness. Although the national network of hydrometeorological stations has been invested and modernized, its density is not high and it is not fully distributed in areas where dangerous natural disasters frequently occur; forecasting and warning work is only at the district and provincial levels; investment in advanced forecasting technology at the local level is still limited, and some places have not yet formed a specialized forecasting and warning system for natural disaster prevention.
The resilience of some infrastructure and works such as bridges and culverts in some places is still low; the work of assessing the quality of infrastructure, works, construction, updating, adjusting and supplementing plans and solutions for natural disaster response in some localities is still slow, lacking flexibility, specificity and meticulousness; ensuring smooth communication in some areas, especially remote areas, when natural disasters occur is still difficult; traffic is cut off, making it difficult to access the scene, leading to untimely relief.
Mountainous provinces lack on-site response forces and support equipment. There is still a subjective and passive mentality in disaster prevention and control among some agencies, units and a segment of the population.
Disaster prevention and control is an extremely important task. To achieve good results in this work in the coming time, it is necessary to focus on the following basic solutions:
Firstly, raise awareness of the dangers of natural disasters for the whole society. Strengthen propaganda and education on the Party's guidelines, policies and laws of the State related to prevention, response and overcoming the consequences of natural disasters, creating unity in awareness and action in the face of the situation and negative impacts of natural disasters. Promote the role of the media and press, paying special attention to vulnerable groups. Equip people with skills to prevent storms, flash floods and landslides to reduce damage; overcome subjective psychology among a part of the people.
Second, continue to thoroughly grasp and implement the Party's guidelines and policies, seriously and effectively implement legal documents and instructions of the State and Government. In particular, focus on implementing Directive 42/CT-TW of the Secretariat; the Law amending and supplementing the Law on Natural Disaster Prevention and Control; the Law on Dikes, the Law on Civil Defense and guiding documents under the Law to ensure law enforcement in natural disaster prevention and control. Natural disasters are always complicated and unpredictable, so it is necessary to do a good job of reviewing, supplementing, adjusting and perfecting the system of legal documents as a basis for implementing natural disaster prevention and control work to achieve high efficiency.
Third, do a good job of forecasting, warning, monitoring and supervising natural disasters. Improve the quality of forecasting, ensure early, timely and accurate forecasting of natural disasters, incidents and catastrophes. Strengthen the installation of specialized natural disaster monitoring and surveillance systems, equipment for monitoring the journey of ships at sea, stations for monitoring rain, water levels, cameras for monitoring reservoirs and key dykes. Regularly review and update climate change scenarios, rising sea levels, long-term forecasts of natural disasters and water resources.
Fourth, incorporate disaster prevention and control into the planning and development of socio-economic plans, investment programs and projects of ministries, branches and localities, especially projects on infrastructure development, transportation, new urban areas and concentrated residential areas. Enhance the resilience of disaster prevention and control works and infrastructure. Complete irrigation and hydropower systems; develop the area and improve the quality of upstream and coastal protection forests.
Fifth, diversify resource mobilization and effectively use resources according to decentralization and delegation of authority. Mobilize domestic and foreign resources in natural disaster prevention and control. Promote international cooperation in management, response and recovery methods for natural disasters; build projects and apply science and technology in natural disaster prevention and control.
Source: https://baoquocte.vn/bao-ve-nguoi-dan-truoc-thien-tai-tham-hoa-293862.html
Comment (0)