With Chinese New Year around the corner, and Guangdong province set to transport well over a hundred million travelers during the holiday travel rush, authorities are wasting no time to anticipate and prepare themselves for the many security challenges that the ‘chunyun’ is sure to bring.
Yesterday saw a dramatic series of comprehensive emergency drills carried out at Guangzhou’s South Railway Station, covering an array of possible scenarios ranging from explosions to stampedes to violent attacks and kidnapping, Tencent News reports.
Among the day’s most dramatic drills involved a scenario where a man in plain clothes suddenly seized a female ‘passenger’ on the station’s west plaza and put a knife to her throat while loudly threatening passersby and nearby police.
The exercise saw Panyu District SWAT units rapidly respond to the scene and attempt to negotiate with the hostage-taker, followed by the deployment of a sniper team, which carried out a simulated shooting. When the man playing the part of the hostage-taker hit the ground, emergency medical responders moved in to provide first aid to the ‘victim’ and transport her to hospital.
Similar drills were carried out at the station last year in advance of the Spring Festival travel season to simulate a 'terrorist knife attack,' which saw the ‘suspect’ caught in a Batman-style net before police moved in.
Train stations have been a site of great security concern in China ever since a massive knife attack at a train station in Kunming, Yunnan left 33 dead and 143 wounded back in 2014.
[Images via Tencent News]
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