Typhoon Kalmaegi Strikes: CATAS Actively Fights Back and Deploys Post-Disaster Self-Rescue

Web News  This year's No. 15 super typhoon “Kalmaegi” made landfall at 9:40 on September 16 in Wengtian Town, Wenchang, coinciding with Hainan's astronomical high tide, bringing severe disasters to the cities and counties in northern and western Hainan Province, with many areas flooded due to seawater intrusion. At the Danzhou campus and Haikou campus of the Chinese Academy of Tropical Agricultural Sciences, trees were blown down, and some infrastructure such as scientific research greenhouses was also damaged.

In this battle against the typhoon, CATAS made meticulous arrangements, urgently activated its emergency response plan, and acted quickly, braving wind and rain to carry out disaster relief and emergency rescue, achieving active prevention beforehand and rapid action afterward, minimizing disaster losses with no casualties.

Before the typhoon arrived, CATAS attached great importance to defense work, promptly formulated a plan, and President Wang Qinghuang convened a meeting to personally make arrangements. According to the work arrangements, units under the academy quickly took action, reinforcing seedlings, pruning tree crowns, securing doors and windows, and taking preventive measures for laboratories and offices.

After the disaster occurred, CATAS immediately convened a video conference to deploy post-disaster self-rescue and scientific and technological disaster relief work. President Wang Qinghuang fully affirmed the results achieved by all staff in the process of typhoon prevention, and mobilized everyone to actively carry out emergency repairs and self-rescue, restore scientific research and production order and living environment as soon as possible, and at the same time, in light of local disaster conditions and scientific and technological disaster relief needs, organize scientific and technological personnel to promptly rush to disaster-stricken areas such as Wenchang, Haikou, Danzhou, Wanning, and Zhanjiang to carry out targeted technical guidance services and help restore agricultural production after the disaster. Secretary Lei Maoliang hoped that units under the academy would comprehensively summarize their experience in fighting typhoons and providing disaster relief, continuously improve their ability to respond to and manage risks, and required that each institute, centering on the post-disaster needs of experimental farms, proactively connect with production teams and provide technical support services, while also proactively understanding the needs of disaster areas and carrying out scientific and technological disaster relief actions.

All cadres and staff of CATAS showed a strong sense of responsibility and fearless spirit of sacrifice in the post-disaster self-rescue work. On September 16, before the typhoon had completely passed, all cadres and staff of the Logistics Service Center braved wind and rain to promptly clear fallen branches, keep roads open, promptly release floodwater and eliminate dangers, and rush-repair electrical circuits. Units under the academy such as the Institute of Crop Sciences, the Rubber Research Institute, and the South Asia Institute also actively organized cadres and staff to devote themselves to rescuing scientific research experimental materials. While carrying out post-disaster self-rescue, CATAS also sent a group of scientific and technological experts to disaster-stricken areas in Hainan and Guangdong to learn about the disaster situation and guide disaster relief.