Quake early warning system under construction

An early warning system for earthquakes is being built in Chengdu, Sichuan province.

The technology for the system will be provided by the city's Institute of Care-Life.

With the technology, the city will have 57 early warning stations, according to Zheng Songlin, deputy chief of the earthquake monitoring technology center under the city's anti-earthquake and disaster relief bureau.

"Upon completion of the system, Chengdu will send earthquake alerts when its early warning stations detect disaster-like seismic waves," he said.

The real-time system is possible thanks to the difference in speed between seismic and radio waves.

"Radio waves travel at 300,000 kilometers per second, while seismic waves travel at between 3 and 6 kilometers per second," said Chen Huizhong, research fellow with the Institute of Geophysics of the China Earthquake Administration.

China only started attaching importance to early warning stations after the Wenchuan earthquake in 2008, which killed about 90,000 people. Many countries, such as Japan, Mexico and Turkey, started much earlier, Chen said.

"Fujian province in eastern China is also building an early warning system in the whole province with the backing of the Ministry of Science and Technology," he said.

According to the China Earthquake Administration, a national earthquake early warning system is under construction, but there is no deadline for its completion.