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TALKS are under way over the fate of the annual lantern festival at Shanghai’s Yuyuan Garden following the Bund tragedy.

Several public events have already been called off because of the crush incident of December 31 that ended in the loss of 36 lives and injuries to 49 others.

The Spring Festival celebration would be the 15th held at the Yuyuan Garden, an event that in recent years has attracted around 60,000 visitors a day.

Yuyuan will put more emphasis on handling huge visitor numbers in the future, said Xu Yihua of the Shanghai Yuyuan Tourist Mart Co Ltd, operator of the historical area.

Two guards have been deployed at each end of the popular Zigzag Bridge, built 400 years ago, to keep order and the number of guards will increase to six on important holidays, when 150 volunteers will also be on duty to help keep order over the entire Yuyuan Garden area.

The bridge will allow people to travel in one direction only when the number of visitors in the area reaches 20,000, and when it goes beyond 30,000 a one-way system will be introduced throughout the business and tourist area, said Xu.

The bridge will be closed if numbers surge to 40,000 and no more people will be let into the Yuyuan Garden area if visitor flow reaches 50,000, he said.

The company has installed more than 300 cameras outdoors and 400 indoors, as well as 48 sets of counters at road crossings to monitor visitor flow.

Meanwhile, city officials, including Party Chief Han Zheng and Mayor Yang Xiong, were on an inspection tour yesterday that included Metro lines, shopping malls, disease control centers and some schools.

At the Qufu Road Metro station, an interchange for Lines 8 and 12, Han examined fire control measures and security checks. He said all staff should hold frequent drills to enhance their ability to deal with emergencies. Such exercises should also raise passengers’ safety awareness.

The mayor visited the Shenergy Group’s gas distribution center and noted of water, electricity and gas supplies were the city’s lifelines.

“You should never relax when you are familiar with your work,” he told workers

At the Global Harbor shopping mall, the mayor inspected its fire control center and the facilities of its firefighting team.

“Safety related work is extremely important at densely populated places like shopping malls,” the mayor said, suggesting that the management company appoint a dedicated safety official, deploy more staff and hold more safety drills.