Reflection on the Jinyang Mountain Flood Disaster in Sichuan: Fully Understanding that "the biggest lesson is not deeply learning from it"
Rescue site for the 8.21 mountain flood disaster in Jinyang, Sichuan. Xinhua News Agency Information Map
After the Sichuan Provincial Government announced at a press conference on August 30th that there were cases of concealing and falsely reporting the number of missing persons in the "8.21" flash flood disaster in Jinyang County, the local government has held consecutive meetings to reflect and learn from the lessons.
According to the Sichuan Daily, on September 4th, Huang Qiang, Deputy Secretary of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee and Governor, presided over a meeting of the Governor's Office to review and review the problems in flood prevention, disaster reduction, disaster relief, and safety production, and to study and deploy the next steps of work.
According to the report, Huang Qiang pointed out that the Jinyang Mountain Flood disaster caused significant casualties, and there was a serious problem of false reporting, concealment, and loss of contact. This reflects the inadequate implementation of the requirements of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, and exposes prominent problems in disaster prevention, relief, and safety production work that are not deep and practical. The main problems are that some places and units have weak safety awareness, responsibilities are not tightly compacted, safety supervision is loopholes, accountability is lenient, sensitivity to early problems, and lack of timely understanding of the real situation. The lessons learned are particularly profound. The whole province must draw lessons from others and make comprehensive improvements to ensure a safe flood season this year, and firmly uphold the safety bottom line.
Huang Qiang emphasized the need to elevate political stance, adhere to a political perspective on security issues and economic work, and better coordinate development and security. Give full play to the leadership of the Party as the greatest advantage of state-owned enterprises, prioritize the political construction of the Party, study the Party Constitution, clarify Party rules and abide by Party discipline, earnestly study laws and regulations such as the Safety Production Law of the People's Republic of China, firmly establish the concept of safety development, further correct the "three outlooks", shoulder the safety responsibilities of all parties, and comprehensively improve the level of safety production management and risk prevention capabilities. We must deeply learn from the lessons of recent disasters and accidents, and resolutely avoid repeating the same mistakes. Fully understanding that the biggest lesson is not deeply learning from it, we must truly value, implement, supervise, and hold accountable, and focus on fundamentally identifying safety hazards and solving problems. Persist in going down and then down again, and effectively implement safety responsibilities to every position and every employee. We must avoid formalism and bureaucracy, and cannot implement meetings or documents through meetings. Make good use of various methods such as phone messages, loudspeakers, drums and gongs to ensure that early warning and forecasting information is transmitted to the construction site and people in a timely manner, and form a feedback loop for transfer and avoidance information; Immediately shut down and relocate engineering camps that clearly violate laws and regulations by occupying river channels and flood channels. For those that do not currently have the necessary conditions, timely develop plans and orderly relocate them; Seize the "bull nose" of implementing the main responsibility, further improve the institutional mechanism, strictly hold accountable in accordance with the law and regulations, deal with a group of cases, alert the whole province, and accelerate the formation of a safety work atmosphere of "dare not violate, cannot violate, and do not want to violate".
Previously, on the evening of August 30th, the Standing Committee of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee held a meeting. The meeting pointed out that a flash flood disaster occurred in Jinyang County, causing multiple casualties and loss of contact. The lessons learned were extremely profound, especially in cases where relevant personnel were suspected of concealing and falsely reporting the number of missing persons, which had an extremely negative impact. This situation has added chaos to the overall development of the province and caused a passive situation in work. This also indicates that some units and localities have not fully implemented the requirements of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China's deployment, and have ignored the "three orders and five applications" of the provincial party committee and government. The awareness of risk avoidance that "it is better to take ten precautions and nine empty measures than to take precautions" has not been firmly established, and the work of disaster prevention and reduction and safety production is still superficial, with many loopholes and shortcomings.
On August 31st, a teleconference on disaster prevention, reduction, and safety production work in the province was held in Chengdu. Provincial Party Secretary Wang Xiaohui pointed out that Sichuan is a place with frequent natural disasters. In recent times, various geological disasters and safety production accidents in the province have increased, especially on the early morning of August 21st, a flash flood disaster occurred in Jinyang County, Liangshan Prefecture, causing multiple casualties and loss of contact. This is very heartbreaking and the lessons learned are very profound. It is particularly intolerable that there have been cases where relevant personnel are suspected of concealing and falsely reporting the number of missing persons, with extremely serious circumstances and extremely negative impacts.
Jinyang County, Liangshan Prefecture is located to the north of the Jinsha River, with an average elevation of over 2000 meters. The river section here connects to Baihetan and Xiluodu, two medium-sized power stations. On the early morning of August 21st, a flash flood broke out in Jinyang County due to the impact of short-term heavy rainfall. The steel reinforcement processing plant of the JN1 section of the Shudao Group Riverside Expressway project located downstream of the Lujianlin River in Jinyang County was washed away, and the floor houses of migrant workers were destroyed.
The Office of the Leading Group for the Handling of the "8.21" Natural Disaster Event in Jinyang County issued a notice on August 21, stating that after preliminary verification, the natural disaster occurred at the construction site of the JN section of the Yangtze River Expressway in Dengchang Village, Lujian Town, Jinyang County. There were a total of 85 people on the construction site, and as of 13:30 on August 21, 79 people were successfully searched and rescued, while the rest of the personnel are currently searching and rescuing.
But on August 30th, a press conference held by the Sichuan Provincial Government revealed that after investigation and sorting, the total number of people on the construction site at the time of the disaster far exceeded 85.
It was introduced at the press conference that before the disaster, according to the weather forecast and rainstorm early warning, flood prevention and emergency departments and other relevant departments carried out multiple early warning and dispatching for the JN1 bid section project of the riverside expressway. The safety director and the personnel on duty of the project department confirmed the feedback, but did not organize the personnel to avoid risks and transfer in time as required. After the disaster, Jinyang County and Liangshan Prefecture successively launched a three-level flood control emergency response, and Sichuan Province launched a fourth level flood control emergency response. The Provincial Party Committee and Provincial Government made arrangements for emergency rescue and disaster relief as soon as possible. The Provincial Defense Department immediately organized the Emergency Management Department, Water Resources Department, Transportation Department and other departments to rush to the scene and carry out rescue operations in the same area. More than 2000 rescue forces were deployed, and a network style search and rescue was carried out on the Lujiaolin River, Jinsha River water area, transportation arteries, and mountain forests along the river. After search and rescue, the bodies of four victims were salvaged ashore on August 23rd, 24th, and 27th.
"With the continuous deepening of search and verification work, it has been found that there are doubts about the number of missing persons reported by project construction enterprises." The press conference stated that a leading group for investigating and handling the "8.21" mountain flood disaster in Jinyang County, Liangshan Prefecture was immediately established at the provincial level. The public security organs shall lawfully summon and investigate personnel from the project department and labor service company of the JN1 section of the Yangtze River Expressway, and simultaneously carry out verification visits, data analysis, and other work. Strengthen collaboration and cooperation with relevant parties in Yunnan and Guizhou, and organize elite police forces to conduct on-site inquiries and inspections. After investigation and sorting, it was found that there were 201 people on the project site at the time of the disaster, of which 149 were rescued, 4 died, and 48 were lost.
Investigation and evidence collection have revealed that five individuals, including Liu from the project department and labor service company of the JN1 section of the Yangtze River Expressway, are suspected of the crime of not reporting or falsely reporting safety accidents. On August 28th, the public security organs took criminal detention measures against Liu and five others in accordance with the law. At present, the public security organs are making every effort to carry out case investigation.
