What if your family members are facing death but you can’t rush to the scene and all emergency hotlines (应急热线) are busy? A mother in Zhengzhou made a smart choice.

At around 5 p.m. on July 20, Yu Ting’s two children and her mother Li Lan were trapped (被困) in a car in the flood (洪水) while Li was driving the children home from school. The car stopped working and they could not open the doors and windows.

Li moved her hands to get people’s attention, but nobody noticed her because of the heavy rain. She then called Yu Ting for help. Yu tried to keep composure and think of ways to save them.

“I asked my mother to tell me about any nearby shops. Then I found their phone numbers on food-delivery and store-rating apps.” Yu called Lu Lianmeng, the owner of a convenience store. “Lu said he wasn’t in the store and would ask others to help. Then he called Li Kunpeng, the manager of a nearby hotel.” Yu said.

Li Kunpeng rushed to the car. He tried his best to break the window and shouted for help as well. Then more people came, including the owner of a noodle shop, two security guards, and so on. They brought tools and worked together to break the glass. Finally, Li Lan and the children were saved. Their warmhearted help has touched a lot of people.”

There is a saying that “earthquakes don’t kill people, buildings do.” It seems sadly true. Thousands of people died under bricks (砖块) of the damaged (毁坏的) buildings during the recent earthquakes. Is there a way to build earthquake-proof (抗震) buildings? Engineers have some life-saving ideas.

“Lift” the house up

To prevent earthquake waves from going through the building, one way is to “lift” the building’s foundation above the ground. The building can be built on top of pads (垫状物), which are usually made up of steel and rubber. During earthquakes, only the pads move and the building stays steady (平稳的). This can reduce the strength of earthquake waves by 13 to 15 percent, according to the website Bethinking the Future.

Right materials

Earthquake-proof materials must be easy to bend (弯曲) without breaking. Some of these materials include steel, wood and bamboo. In Japan, most traditional houses are built with wood. During earthquakes, wooden buildings bend to avoid building up stress. Steel is one of the main materials of modern tall buildings because it can increase their ductility (延展性).

Dome house

A Japanese company has made dome-shaped houses with styrofoam. Styrofoam is a very light material. The whole house weighs only 80 kilograms. So when earthquakes happen, the house will not hurt people.

Besides, there are many other good ideas on building earthquake-proof buildings. For example, a company in America is developing magnetic field (磁场) technology that can raise houses above ground when earthquakes happen. We hope these ideas can be put in action and more people’s lives can be saved.

Beijing, together with many regions in northern China, experienced a sandstorm on Monday. The sandstorm is the strongest and the most sweeping one in nearly a decade, according to the National Meteorological Center.

Starting from Monday to Tuesday, affected by cold fronts and heavy winds, floating sand and dust were expected to sweep parts of Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Hebei, Beijing and Tianjin, forecast the center. The center has advised the public to take precautions against the heavy winds and sandstorms, and suggested that drivers prepare for poor visibility. The center also predicted that it would not end soon.

Remote sensing images of dust in northern China show the dust from southern Mongolia gradually traveled south with the airflow.

Visibility remained low in Beijing as the municipal observatory issued a yellow alert. The yellow alert, or the second-lowest level in the four-tier weather alert system, was issued at 7:35 am by the Beijing Meteorological Service on Monday. It said the sandstorm would continue during the day time and the visibility would be lower than l,000 meters at noon.

At 9 am Monday, the city’s level of PM10 particles reached 8,108 micrograms per cubic meter at six major urban districts, with the city seeing heavy pollution.

The Beijing Capital International Airport canceled 247 flights and the Beijing Daxing International Airport 181 flights by 9:30 am Monday due to the sandstorm. The total planned inbound and outbound flights in the capital airport for today was 1,141, which means more than 20 percent of the flights have been canceled. For the Daxing airport, the total number of planned inbound and outbound flights for today was 846 and 21.39 percent of them have been canceled.