Taipei Fine Arts Museum

Taipei City Fire Department indicated that legislation for the prohibition against flying lanterns is in accordance with the regulations of the central government and citizen’s expectation.
For the different opinions of some people regarding that Taipei City will legislate against releasing flying lanterns, Taipei City Fire Department addressed on Jan. 5th that, Taipei City is not only a basin, but there are mostly business area and residential areas in the city which are not ideal places to release flying lanterns. Moreover, in the business and residential areas, there are quite a lot of old communities and buildings. Once fire is caused, the result could be very serious. Inappropriate use of flying lanterns can cause serious fire hazard and accidents, not only it would put people's life at risk, heavy fines and civil liabilities will be charged. Therefore, in order to secure the safety of lives and property of most people, it is better to prohibit from releasing flying lanterns.
Taipei City Fire Department showed that at the same time, “Taipei City Fire Prevention Autonomous Regulations (Draft)” under Taipei City Council’s review is made mainly following regulations by the central government. Taipei City Fire Department indicated that, in order to ensure the safety of releasing flying lanterns during custom activities and prevent fire from happening, Ministry of the Interior has implemented “Guidelines of releasing flying lanterns” as early as in 2006, requesting in accordance with Article 34 of Civil Aviation Act that it is not allowed to release flying lanterns in areas such as within a certain distance around airports, the areas decided and announced prohibition against releasing objects which will danger aviation safety by Ministry of Transportation and Communications along with related organization, tank areas of oil storage equipments, ammunition depots, gunpowder depots, flammable gas storage tanks and bases, expressways, chemical factories or areas closer to business and residential areas with dense population and harbor areas, etc..
Taipei City Fire Department indicated that, there are mostly business and residential areas in Taipei City. Riverside parks (such as Dajia section) belong to the aviation control area of Taipei Songshan Airport. Moreover, the areas of Taipei County next to Taipei City riverside parks are Banqiao, Sanchong, Xindian, Xizhi, Yonghe, Zhonghe, etc. which are also with intensive buildings. In order to prevent releasing flying lanterns against the security of Taipei City and the safety of the neighboring highly developed cities and towns in Taipei County, “Taipei City Fire Prevention Autonomous Regulations (Draft)” is planned to regulate Taipei City from releasing flying lanterns.
In order to make the regulations of fire prevention autonomous regulation satisfy the same direction of public opinions, “Taipei City Fire Prevention Autonomous Regulations (Draft)” has been under discussion in many meetings, a public conference inviting experts from industrial, governmental and academic fields was held on 2008/3/12, and it was published on Taipei City Government Report on 2008/5/1. The whole draft has been passed by the Taipei City Government on 2009/3/24 and was sent to Taipei City Council for review on 2009/4/2.

Taipei City Fire Department further addressed that they will strengthen the guidance of Taipei City Fire Prevention Autonomous Regulations (Draft) according to the reviewed opinions from the legislation committee of Taipei City Council, in the meantime, collect the implementation experiences from local and overseas to make a more considerate approach in a hope of improving the overall public safety criteria of Taipei City.