The National Fire Agency (NFA) is urging hikers to use a GPS tracking app to help navigate trails and to increase their chances of being rescued when lost or injured.
Last year, 513 search-and-rescue incidents were reported, with lost or missing hikers accounting for 44 percent of the cases, the NFA said.
Hiking in the mountains is popular, but after the government relaxed restrictions for mountaineering and hiking, the number of reported incidents, which are handled by local fire departments with emergency-response units, rose.
Photo courtesy of the National Fire Agency
Sixty percent of the lost or missing cases were due to self-organized trips among friends, or because the hikers had joined a group online with people they did not know or were led by a person who was not a certified hiking guide, the NFA said.
Most incidents involved groups comprised of senior citizens on self-organized mountain hiking trips without an experienced guide, it said.
In addition to proper gear, safety devices, and adequate food and water provisions, the NFA recommends that hikers download a GPS tracking app and register on the Hiking Guard platform (https://hiking-guard.web.app/), which links to a user’s account on the Line messaging app.
Hikers who cannot read Chinese can get a Taiwanese friend to help them register on Hiking Guard, the agency said.
The platform and a GPS rental service were developed and are provided in collaboration with TWN Mountain Education Association, Emson Social Enterprise, and the Rescue Technology Innovation and Consultant Association of Taiwan, it said.
If lost, hikers can follow the platform’s records to return to their starting point, the NFA said.
If injured or in an emergency situation, hikers can use the platform’s “SOS” button to call for help, which would be relayed to the local fire department, or nearby forestry or national park offices, which would dispatch a search team to the GPS location, it said.
Separately, an expert on Sunday said that the risk of a hornet attack had increased after forested areas were damaged by Typhoon Gaemi late last month.
Rain and strong winds from the typhoon knocked down tree branches and hornet nests, which are more difficult to see on the ground when covered by vegetation and branches, said Cheng Kun-yen (鄭琨諺), who has worked in pest control, including bees and hornets, for more than 10 years.
“We are into the summer season, when hornet nests are as large as a volleyball. In the fall, they can grow as large as a basketball,” he said, adding that late summer and autumn are hornets’ mating season, when they become more aggressive and are prone to attack people.
Hikers could accidentally approach hidden nests or even trample those knocked over in the storm and be stung in an attack, he said.
In hilly areas and mountains, most attacks are by black-tailed tiger hornets, which are territorial up to 100m, and can cause severe injury when they attack, Cheng said, adding that he had last year gone into shock and required medical treatment after he was stung by just one hornet.
“Hornet nests are found almost everywhere in the wild, on trees, on the ground and in bushes... When in forested areas, people should not wear perfume, should remain quiet and when they see one or two patrolling hornets, they should quietly walk away in the opposition direction,” he said.
Starlux Airlines, Taiwan’s newest international carrier, has announced it would apply to join the Oneworld global airline alliance before the end of next year. In an investor conference on Monday, Starlux Airlines chief executive officer Glenn Chai (翟健華) said joining the alliance would help it access Taiwan. Chai said that if accepted, Starlux would work with other airlines in the alliance on flight schedules, passenger transits and frequent flyer programs. The Oneworld alliance has 13 members, including American Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific and Qantas, and serves more than 900 destinations in 170 territories. Joining Oneworld would also help boost
A new tropical storm formed late yesterday near Guam and is to approach closest to Taiwan on Thursday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. Tropical Storm Pulasan became the 14th named storm of the year at 9:25pm yesterday, the agency said. As of 8am today, it was near Guam traveling northwest at 21kph, it said. The storm’s structure is relatively loose and conditions for strengthening are limited, WeatherRisk analyst Wu Sheng-yu (吳聖宇) said on Facebook. Its path is likely to be similar to Typhoon Bebinca, which passed north of Taiwan over Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and made landfall in Shanghai this morning, he said. However, it
Taiwan's Gold Apollo Co (金阿波羅通信) said today that the pagers used in detonations in Lebanon the day before were not made by it, but by a company called BAC which has a license to use its brand. At least nine people were killed and nearly 3,000 wounded when pagers used by Hezbollah members detonated simultaneously across Lebanon yesterday. Images of destroyed pagers analyzed by Reuters showed a format and stickers on the back that were consistent with pagers made by Gold Apollo. A senior Lebanese security source told Reuters that Hezbollah had ordered 5,000 pagers from Taiwan-based Gold Apollo. "The product was not
COLD FACTS: ‘Snow skin’ mooncakes, made with a glutinous rice skin and kept at a low temperature, have relatively few calories compared with other mooncakes Traditional mooncakes are a typical treat for many Taiwanese in the lead-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival, but a Taipei-based dietitian has urged people not to eat more than one per day and not to have them every day due to their high fat and calorie content. As mooncakes contain a lot of oil and sugar, they can have negative health effects on older people and those with diabetes, said Lai Yu-han (賴俞含), a dietitian at Taipei Hospital of the Ministry of Health and Welfare. “The maximum you can have is one mooncake a day, and do not eat them every day,” Lai
RSS