In which, it is noteworthy that Hue city has just test-operated 2 clusters of warning sirens for disaster prevention and control. One cluster is located at Hue City Irrigation Exploitation One Member Limited Liability Company, the other cluster is at the office building of city agencies and units. Warning sounds are likely to spread within a radius of about 5km, the siren time is about 15 minutes.
It is still known that now smartphones, text messages, social networks, loudspeakers or warning applications are increasingly popular. But in natural disasters, phones are not always with people, telecommunications signals are not always stable, and not everyone regularly monitors information in the digital environment.
The whistles, born from the last century, therefore still have their own value, which is simple, direct, and can quickly attract the attention of an entire area.
The sound of the whistle, seemingly outdated, shows a very new mindset that natural disasters must be warned early and people must be prepared to act before danger strikes. In the context of heavy rain, flash floods, landslides and flooding that are increasingly unpredictable as they are now, taking one more step proactively can create a very big difference in results.
Proactiveness in disaster prevention and control is also shown not only in Hue's warning system. But other localities such as Lao Cai, Da Nang... have also been and are urgently implementing solutions to prevent flooding, landslides and relocate tens of thousands of households from dangerous areas before the rainy and storm season.
Each locality has different requirements and ways of doing things, depending on the actual situation and needs. Where it is necessary to build embankments to prevent landslides, where it is necessary to invest in drainage, where it is necessary to relocate people along with resettlement, creating sustainable livelihoods for people. But all share a consistent message, which is that disaster prevention and control in localities is shifting from responding when incidents occur to proactively handling risks early and remotely.
Of course, there will be no warning means or prevention and control works that can completely eliminate natural disasters. No locality can guarantee that after what has been done, there will be no more flooding, landslides or unusual situations in the future.
But the damage caused by natural disasters to people's lives and infrastructure could be greatly reduced if warnings came earlier, construction was completed before the rainy season, dangerous points were handled before incidents occurred, and people knew clearly what they had to do when there was an alarm signal.
Natural disasters often do not give us much time to consider and choose. So the most important thing in disaster prevention and control is still proactiveness and preparation before danger appears.
That is the most practical way to protect the lives and property of people and infrastructure for the locality and the country.
