Shenzhen to spend 15 billion yuan on ensuring safety of construction waste after landslide that killed 70
PUBLISHED : Monday, 01 February, 2016, 10:08pm
UPDATED : Monday, 01 February, 2016, 10:07pm
He Huifeng
[email protected]
Rescue workers use excavators to dig and search among the debris of destroyed buildings after a landslide hit an industrial park in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, in December 2015. Photo: Edward Wong
Shenzhen plans to spend 15 billion yuan (HK$17.77 billion) this year ensuring the safety of building sites and dumping grounds, following the deaths last year of 70 people killed by the collapse of a mountain of construction waste.
Various campaigns would be launched to identify and remove potential hazards at building sites, landfills, soil slopes and grounds holding construction waste and hazardous materials, the city’s Mayor Xu Qin said at the legislature’s annual meeting on Sunday.
Xu stressed the importance of learning from the fatal landslide in late December, saying the government would ensure “the strictest standards”, “the most compact system” and hold officials accountable for public safety management.
In addition to the deaths, the landslide in December destroyed 33 buildings in the Hengtaiyu industrial zone.
Xiong Yang, from the NGO Green River, said many of Shenzhen’s recent disasters were largely the result of overly aggressive urbanisation, in which development was driven by profit, but lacked adequate supervision and long-range planning.
About 7.3 million of Shenzhen’s 18 million residents live in illegal buildings, according to the Southern Metropolis Daily.
High home prices have forced many young people to compromise their safety by moving into such buildings.
Another concern for the city is the relative frequency of accidents involving collapsing structures at construction zones.
Between 2007 and 2013, eight people have been killed in 37 cases of collapsing structures. More than half of these collapses took place near under-construction Metro stations, according to local media.
Metro construction and ageing underground pipelines were the primary cause of cave-ins, news website sznews reported.
Official statistics have not been updated since then, but local media reported several Metro-related collapses from 2014 to 2015.
In February 2014, three collapses were reported on three consecutive days at one site in the city’s downtown area.
On June 25, one person died when part of a Metro construction site in Futian district caved in.
Xiong said large-scale construction of Metro and real estate projects would continue to threaten public safety over the coming years as more waste was produced and more dump sites built.
On December 28, the city officially began construction on six Metro projects, which will cost 61 billion yuan and add 66km to the Metro network when completed by 2020.
“A lot of real estate buildings are under construction following the subway routes. A large number of landslides and flooding incidents were triggered by dump trucks illegally dumping waste near construction sites that had blocked drain pipes.” Xiong said.
He said the ongoing construction on Metro sites would mean many roads needed to be dug up. This had the potential to damage drains and cause floods that could paralyse the city during the rainy season.
