Chengdu has world's largest quake monitor

The Institute of Care-Life, a non-government earthquake warning system in Chengdu, has become the world's largest earthquake monitoring system, the Beijing Times reported on Tuesday.

The system has monitoring stations in eight provinces, including Gansu, Shaanxi, Sichuan and Yunnan, and covers 400,000 square kilometers. It provides earthquake-warning services to more than 80 million people.

So far, the system has monitored more than 1,200 earthquakes and successfully gave early warnings for a 4.9-magnitude earthquake in Yunnan on Feb 19, the paper added.

According to the institute, casualties in earthquakes can be decreased by 14 percent if a three-second warning is issued, and by 39 percent with a 10-second warning.

The warning system has more than 160,671 online followers on Sina Weibo.