Wengchuan earthquake and drinking water safety

The devastating Wenchuan Earthquake occurred in Sichuan Province, China, with a magnitude of 8.0 on May 12, 2008. In the early stage after the earthquake, collapsing£¬squeezing and asphyxia play the major part of injury, then goes the lack of water and food in polluted environment. After the earthquake, public health staffs in the frontline have to face the rigors of drinking water supply and epidemic prevention. The earthquake will block the electricity, food and water supply, which may deteriorate the environment sanitation of disaster area and cause foodborne diseases, communicable diseases, zoonosis or other secondary events. So to make sure the prompt rescue work properly is of extreme significance, and to enforce the supervision and management of food and drinking water sanitation are also very important to the prevention of food poisoning and intestinal infectious diseases. The earthquake may contaminate the water source, damage the water treatment equipments and water pipeline, therefore, a complete set of measures for prevention and restoring of water supply should be put into consideration. To explore the prevention and emergency measures to ensure drinking water safety and sanitation in earthquake in order to assure sufficient water provision to disaster area and further prevent outbreaks of intestinal infectious diseases. According to three stages of an earthquake, we put forward the beforehand planning of the water source selection, backup water disposition, and engineering force, technical avoidance measures for disaster relief and rescue before the earthquake. Secondly, the drinking water safety education, emergency transportation of drinking water, strengthen drinking water disinfection, construction of mobile water plants and emergency measures of drinking water management and purification during the earthquake. We also discuss post-earthquake reconstruction, rehabilitation and water quality monitoring. We hope this article will do some help for the government and rescuing workers during an earthquake disaster.