With rainy season beginning this month, Premier Jiang Yi-huah instructed central and local governments to consolidate preparatory measures, review response mechanisms, and prepare for all contingencies—torrential rains, floods, typhoons, even droughts—so as to safeguard citizens' lives and property.
The premier made these remarks today at a meeting of the Central Disaster Prevention and Response Council where various agencies reported on protective measures for this year's flood and typhoon seasons. Jiang said that disaster prevention and relief are very important tasks to the administration, and thus agencies should work as a team and strive for improvement on existing foundations. Although local disaster drills had been completed May 16, heavy rainwater flooding in several areas over the past few days still resulted in several injuries and deaths. Vigilance over disaster prevention must continue every day throughout the year, the premier reiterated.
In addition, agencies must watch for price fluctuations in agricultural, fishery and livestock products before and after floods, and respond quickly to stabilize food prices, Jiang stated.
The Ministry of Economic Affairs' Water Resources Agency (WRA) also reported on a flood surveillance recognition system it has developed. The WRA expects to finish installing the system this year for collaborative use by Pingtung County, Kaohsiung City and Taipei City. This system, which delivers real-time image feeds, uses existent road surveillance cameras to monitor flood levels and automatically transfers the information into a warning system to send out alerts.
After hearing the report, Premier Jiang instructed the WRA to share its research and technologies with local governments as soon as possible. The WRA should also install the system in low-lying flood-prone spots such as sewers and underpasses, as it would improve real-time monitoring of floods in urban areas and help authorities track and estimate the size of flooding and number of households affected. With this information in hand, authorities can issue timely warnings, traffic control and evacuation orders and increase the efficiency of responses.
The premier pointed out that administrative agencies have developed various apps offering information about water levels, weather, typhoons and mudslides. He requested the agencies to promote the apps so that more people would know how to use them.
In addition, Premier Jiang listened to the Ministry of Culture's (MOC) report on disaster prevention measures for historical sites and buildings. He indicated that such sites are important national cultural assets, and any damage from natural hazards would count as huge losses for Taiwan's culture, art and history. Apart from asking the MOC to continue their work of protecting historical sites and buildings from disasters, the premier instructed the National Fire Agency and the Construction and Planning Agency under the Ministry of the Interior to assist the MOC. He hopes that the public and private sectors can combine their strengths to safeguard cultural assets together.