NEARLY 900 officials and staff from 41 departments of the Futian District Government went to 10 subdistricts Sept. 20 to help clear the roads in the wake of Super Typhoon Mangkhut, which had felled tens of thousands of trees in Shenzhen. Soldiers and residents also joined in. By Sept. 20 afternoon, 17,568 people had cleared 6,963 fallen trees and 12,765 tons of trash from streets. As a result, 625 roads that had been blocked by fallen trees were reopened to traffic. Xie Xi, deputy head of the Publicity Department of the Futian District Committee of the CPC, led more than 40 staff to remove tree branches from pedestrian walks around Shenzhen Senior High School. Two trucks were soon loaded with tree branches cleared from the sidewalks. “Recovering our city from the destruction by Mangkhut is our responsibility,” Li Zhiqiang, head of the Futian Emergency Response Office, told reporters. Three teams consisting of 40 staff members from the district’s development and reform bureau, financial bureau, statistics bureau and federation of women descended on Huaxin Road, Sungang Road and Caitian Road to clear the debris. To remove tree branches that had fallen on the Nanyuan section of the Binhe Boulevard sidewalk, soldiers from the PLA’s Garrison in Hong Kong joined hands with staff members from the district’s public security sub-bureau, purchase center, lease center and district committee of the CPPCC. Some of them used electric saws to cut tree branches, some removed the trash while others loaded the tree branches onto trucks. Lianhua Subdistrict Office said 5,580 soldiers, firefighters, staff members from the subdistrict office, companies and institutions in the subdistrict took part in the efforts to remove obstacles and reopen the streets. Even police officers rolled up their sleeves and joined the campaign to help the district recover from the massive destruction brought by Mangkhut, which was the strongest typhoon to have stricken Shenzhen and other parts of Guangdong in decades. Officers from five community police offices in Tongxinling area worked for two days to remove more than 300 fallen trees and tree branches from streets, with the help of residents. (Lin Min) | 