During the autumn of 2003, the climate in South China was abnormal with high temperature and shortage of precipitation. Quite a few regions were threatened by the drought that might be the most serious one since 1949. In these regions, rivers ran out of the water, reservoirs dried up, forest fire weather warning level remained high, the situation of forest fire prevention became more and more severe, forest fire took place frequently and therefore casualty and injuries happened from time to time.
According to the statistics, from October to November of 2003, there are 1659 cases of forest fire, 10898 hectares of forest is damaged and 18 people injured or dead. Comparing with the same period of 2002, the number increased by 5.6, 13.5 and 17 times respectively. Since December, the number of forest fire incidents remains growing. Seen from the pictures received from the monitoring satellites, there are dozens of the hotspots in provinces including Fujian, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi provinces and so on. It has been checked that, more than half of the spots are forest fires, mainly caused by human factors.
The staff of environment meteorology section of CMO has been keeping a close look at the weather condition and receiving the latest hotspot information. They have made accurate forecasting on the highly dangerous fire weather condition continued in regions of southern China. In addition to provide the latest forecast to the fire prevention office of MOF in email, they also publish information on weather and fire dangerous level for those regions on TV meteorological forecast program every night.
On December 26, 2003, CMO issued the first forest fire meteorological warning so as to raise the attention to guard against the forest fires. Later, CMO published two issues on 'Forest Fire Level Meteorological Warning' for southern regions of China on December 31, 2003 and January 5, 2004 respectively. These warnings have been published through TV and other news media to the public, thus making good social effects.
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