Let "unnoticeable" work become "extraordinary"

Narrator: Mei Yuying, disaster information officer at Huanghua Town, Gulin County of Sichuan Province

With their number exceeding 800,000, accumulated disaster information reports surpassing 100,000 –disaster information officers across the urban and rural communities in our country have played an irreplaceable role in submitting disaster statistics, disaster warning, and safeguarding people's lives and properties. Their stories are ordinary but extraordinary--

Since becoming a disaster information officer, my biggest feeling is this work is both bitter and sweet: "bitter" because Gulin County is located in the Wumeng mountains, the mountains are high and steep, and prone to disasters. It is difficult to collect and submit information, in the face of disasters, we often have to stay awake the whole night. "Sweet" is to reduce the number of people getting trapped by disasters through disaster warning, use corresponding information to help them rebuild their homes, and let them smile once again. During the night of June 26, 2020, Huanghua Town encountered a heavy rainstorm. Affected by the power outage and the loss of internet connection, disaster reporting arrangement made before the rainstorm arrived was all messed up.

Time doesn't wait. I immediately reported this situation to my supervisor, and the secretary of the Town Party Committee decided to use the "four-level protection" system to check for disasters at the front line, and sent 16 village working teams to the protection area to inspect the conditions. Since we couldn’t use computers, we recorded each team’s statistics on paper, organized and summarized the information, then took photos and sent them to the county flood-control headquarters.

What disaster information officers do is collecting, delivering, organizing, analyzing, and evaluating information, work that are "unnoticeable", but what we solve are the “extraordinary” problems of submitting disaster warning messages through the "last mile", and make sure disaster information gets accurately reported on time through the "first mile". To protect citizens from disasters, we will continue to work hard!

Contributed by: Zhang Sheng, Zhou Hongshuang, Li Xiaodong, Yao Yaqi, Jiang Xinjun, Wang Simin, reporters of Guangming Daily