Chapter 121: Chapter 119, Rebuilding the City
Osenia did not find herself idle just because the disaster had ended.
On the contrary, she became busier.
In the process of arranging the evacuation of Revival City, the urgency of the matter inevitably led to considerable chaos in the midst of the storm.
But fortunately, the problem was ultimately resolved.
When the evacuation was half completed, the storm subsided, and the sky cleared up.
Although the governor had not issued new orders at that time, Osenia could see that the disaster sufficient to obliterate the entire Revival City seemed to have passed.
Despite the houses that had collapsed in the storm, standing in the flood caused by the torrential rain, everything appeared immensely messy. There were also quite a few people who had been electrified to death by lightning strikes…
But overall, the casualties were still within an acceptable range.
By that time, she had already been requesting the troops assisting her to implement more orderly control; and after confirming the governor’s order that the disaster had ended, she directly halted the evacuation of the city.
At this point, Osenia’s focus shifted to emergency rescue and disaster relief.
The already organized populace was not sent back directly. She took the stage with a loudspeaker, personally explaining the entire process to the people. The dreadful Cultists had tried to summon a storm to destroy the city, but this plot had been personally thwarted by the wise and valiant governor.
Now that the city was safe again, those who hadn’t received their food could continue to collect it at the distribution points; those who had received it were required to participate in the city’s emergency rescue and disaster relief operations under the arrangement of the troops.
As for the tens of thousands of people who had already gone to the evacuation points outside the city, Osenia had not crammed them back into the city.
As per the great governor’s request, they would carry out indoctrination and education on those 30,000-plus people, facilitating their relocation to Weixing City.
This was the pre-established population strategy.
Revival City actually did not need to maintain such a large population.
The past Revival City, not to mention the exploitation of the suburban poor and the refugees by the inner city people, faced difficulties just in terms of industrial structure in sustaining so many people. Revival City’s light industry was decent, but it could not absorb a working population of millions; the service industry was mainly targeted at the inner city, and even the commoners there lived rather tightly, with only the wealthy truly having money, but they did not require that many people to serve them.
Plainly put, the production capacity could not support so many people, and exploitation was not really the key issue.
If Revival City couldn’t support them, Weixing City could!
There was a severe shortage of people there, and the expansion of production was hampered by the population numbers.
In his original plans, Gu Hang had intended to relocate a large portion of Revival City’s population to Weixing City to establish a heavy industry base.
Now it was the perfect opportunity.
Those who had left the city had their belongings washed away by the flood, and with their food for the journey already prepared, the masses might be slow to move, but a two-day march should get them to Weixing City.
Of course, they would not be sent on their way just like that.
The wasteland was not safe.
Captain Perbov had received orders to lead his troops in collaboration with the third battalion, to escort the convoy back.
By then, Patel, the representative of the Abandoned Cave Society, would probably be overjoyed to distraction.
As for the emergency rescue and disaster relief of the outer regions of Revival City, it was actually quite blunt and straightforward.
Originally, there was no planning to speak of in the outer region of the city. When people arrived, they found a spot, set up a shelter, and called it home. The materials for the shelters were diverse; none of these houses had any fire or disaster resistance to speak of, the ones that didn’t leak wind or rain were considered well built.
They had not considered whether the traffic was convenient or not. In the especially dense areas, having a small path for people to get in and out was decent enough.
It was only when the inner city folks couldn’t bear to see it anymore—mainly because they couldn’t have the country folks block the roads in and out of the city—that they planned several main roads and strictly forbade obstruction, thereby maintaining basic supplies and communication.
This too was in Osenia’s plans. Little by little, she aimed to clear the outer city, using the main roads as a reference to develop a more rational network, and establish administrative districts based on industrial structure, dividing the areas by blocks and zones.
The storm and the floods it brought were disasters, but… looking on the bright side, it unwittingly helped to demolish the houses.
Even though the ruins were a mess, they still had to clear them by hand.
So let them clear it.
What was called emergency rescue and disaster relief was just that. They searched through the ruins piece by piece, rescuing people first, and then clearing an area to concentrate the debris in one location. The cleared space would then immediately be used to construct simple, inhabitable large houses, where people could at least sleep in large communal bunks to begin with.
The construction teams would then move in synchronously, building new houses according to the plans in the cleared areas.
Watching many people simply having a full belly, wading through water, rolling up their sleeves, and getting down to work enthusiastically, a long-lost smile appeared on Osenia’s face.
She liked such vibrant scenes the most.
However, after smiling, she immediately turned back to her temporary office.
Since the emergency rescue and relief work was to be combined with city reconstruction, the necessary planning needed to be started promptly.
This caught Osenia somewhat off guard; she had thought there would be plenty of time to think about this. How to demolish, how to rebuild, including how to settle and compensate the civilians whose homes were demolished… Now, many problems didn’t require thinking, but new ones had arisen.