Current Event #9 (1)

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Diablo Valley College *

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120

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Geography

Date

Oct 30, 2023

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pdf

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Uploaded by ChancellorMagpie456

Hunan Wildfires On October 17 wildfires erupted In Hunan, China and the Chinese media has been silent on the natural disaster. The fire has burnt down two townships, Yao Township and Jinling Town, and has killed two firefighters. Chinese netizens speculate that the regime’s party congress has something to do with the silence so they blame them. The Chinese media was silent until October 25 and they held a memorial for the firefighters that lost their lives. Tens of thousands of local residents gathered and marched with banners together to honor the first responders. They also chanted “Safe Trip Home (Rest In Peace)”. Though there was such a large gathering the Chinese media in the mainland still decide not to report about it. Zhao Lanjian, a former journalist stated, “With such a large formation, will mainland Chinese see it reported? No! Not even online.” The memorial was held with local official's approval and it was live-streamed by attendees, but the signal cut out halfway through and later was removed off the website. Zhao said that information about the will fire was censored even though the fire lasted a week and engulfed nearly half of the county. If you search Chinese networks the only information you’ll find is the official report on October 17 to mobilize the emergency firefighting response but now that report is no longer available. Later on October 21 the state mouthpiece CCTV reported a red code wildfire alarm for the entire region of southern China. Southern China is experiencing a “severe to extreme drought and high incidence of forest fires at an extremely dangerous level”. Xintian isn’t the only place in the county hit by the forest fire. There was also a fire in Guangxi but when people started to report about it on Weibo the messages were quickly removed from the platform. In total there we three fires, Jiangxi, Hunan, and

Guangxi. Domestic Chinese media mentioned nothing about the range and severity of the fires and only claimed there have been no casualties. Local residents say otherwise and stated that the Guangxi fires destroyed an entire forest and at least one villager. A banana farm worker sadly died from the fire. On October 26 Hunan ordered the closure of the mountain areas in the district and a fire ban effective until November 30. Hong, Mary. “Hunan Wildfires Destroy at Least 2 Towns, 2 Dead.” Www.theepochtimes.com , 1 Nov. 2022, https://www.theepochtimes.com/hunan-wildfires-destroy-at-least-2-towns-2-dead_4 831034.html .

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