The number of Chinese national fire rescue teams participating in flood fighting and rescue tasks increased by 61% year-on-year

China News Service, Beijing, June 17 (Zhou Xin) Xiong Wei, deputy director of the Special Disaster Rescue Department of the China National Fire and Rescue Administration, said in Beijing on the 17th that since the flood season, as of June 16, the national comprehensive fire rescue team has participated in a total of 1,776 flood fighting and rescue operations, a 61% increase in task volume compared to the same period last year.

On the 17th, the National Fire and Rescue Bureau held a regular press conference in Beijing to inform on the recent fire safety situation and key fire and rescue work.

Xiong Wei said that since the flood season began on April 1 this year, many places in China have suffered from persistent heavy rainfall, causing urban flooding, landslides, mudslides and other disasters to occur frequently. As of June 16, the national comprehensive fire rescue team had dispatched 29,772 officers and soldiers and rescued and evacuated 8,179 people during the flood season.

Xiong Wei said that in the face of the severe flood prevention and relief situation, the national comprehensive fire rescue team has conducted intensive consultations with emergency, meteorological, water conservancy, natural resources and other departments to obtain real-time weather warnings, water conditions, geological disaster risks and other information, and organized and pre-positioned forces. to key areas, combined with short-term weather forecasts, and promptly dispatched forces to vulnerable areas; recently, 5,400 professional water rescue team members were specially selected from the entire team and stationed in six national and regional emergency rescue centers for rotational training and duty, ready to respond at any time.

Xiong Wei introduced that in response to the characteristics of floods in the northern region, the national comprehensive fire rescue team carried out technical and tactical training such as sonar underwater detection, drone aerial search, and engineering machinery wading rescue around complex rescue environments such as mountain torrent mouths, underground projects, and small spaces. In addition, the team has also formed 460 professional emergency communication teams and 2,500 "light cavalry" forward teams to solve the problems of network outages, power outages, and circuit breakages; it has given full play to the role of scientific research strength and advanced equipment, and dispatched and assisted support when encountering major tasks.

At the meeting, Wang Tianrui, spokesman for the China National Fire and Rescue Administration and deputy director of the Fire Supervision Department, said that since the beginning of this year, the national fire safety situation has been generally stable. As of June 14, a total of 452,000 fires have been reported across the country, with 886 deaths. Compared with the same period last year, the number of fires and deaths have dropped by 17.8% and 14.8% respectively. There were 20 major fire accidents, a decrease of 41.2% year-on-year, and no major or particularly major fire accidents occurred. (over)