Under global climate change, mountain hazards such as landslides, debris flows, and flash floods have become increasingly frequent in China's mountainous regions. Although total casualties have declined significantly, sporadic mass-casualty events still occur, exposing persistent weaknesses in early warning dissemination and community emergency response. This study systematically reviews four disastrous events: the 2009 Typhoon Morakot-induced Xiaolin Village landslide (491 fatalities, Kaohsiung, southern Taiwan, China); the 2010 Zhouqu debris flow (1,765 dead or missing, Gansu); the 2020 Mianning flash flood and debris flow (22 dead or missing, Sichuan); and the 2022 Longcao Gully flash flood (7 dead, Sichuan). Four major human-induced factors are identified: (1) insufficient precision and spatial targeting of early warnings; (2) "last-mile" failure in early warning response; (3) weak public risk perception, with self-evacuation not yet an instinctive response; and (4) systematic underestimation of hazard chain risks. To address these challenges, a fine-scale forecasting system developed by the Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, dividing Sichuan into 14,000 small watersheds, has been providing dynamic nowcasts since 2022. Institutionally, a five-tier Public Participation Monitoring and Warning System (PPMWS) and a “wake-up and response” mechanism—integrating emergency broadcasting with a 3 km radius under “three-cut” conditions and a “30123” closed-loop protocol—create a fail-safe pathway from warning to time-bound community action. Persistent challenges include extreme weather unpredictability, complex hazard chains, unstable monitoring teams in remote communities, and managing transient populations. We propose an optimization framework combining scenario-based drills, “emergency first responder” training, household hazard awareness cards, and post-disaster psychological intervention. We argue that the deep integration of fine-grained early warning, the “wake-up and response” mechanism, and community response capacity is the critical pathway to reducing mass-casualty risks from catastrophic mountain disasters.

Catastrophic mountain disasters,Mass casualties,Last-mile failure,Community emergency response,Wake-up and response mechanism