Taipei City Fire Department

Taipei City Fire Department Appeals for Water Safety during The Summer Vacation
Taipei City was found to have a highest maximum temperature of 36.5 °C at 13:45 on May 30. As summer vacation is coming, the number of students to visit water areas will largely increase. Therefore, in order to prevent drowning accidents, Taipei City Fire Department started to strengthen the education for water safety, asking students to pay more attention to their own safety while visiting water areas.
Rivers or streams in mountainous areas beneath its calm surface after rain usually have unexpected currents which are one of the potential sources of danger especially for those who are not familiar to the streamflow conditions. Besides, rivers or streams quickly rise after a thunderstorm, which would lead visitors to be left stranded. Hence, people should take notice of the weather and forecast information and never visit water areas in bad weather. Taipei City Fire Department appeals, firstly, people should only choose water areas with lifeguards on duty, and secondly, not choose to visit those areas with no swimming or danger deep water signs. To maintain personal safety, warm-up exercises and protections should be done, and swimmers should be sure you are not alone before any activity. If you see someone drowning, please throw a life buoy or other floating objects for rescue and call 119 immediately, but not rashly dive into water to save people without expert knowledge.
According to statistics by National Fire Agency, there were totally 668 drowning accidents in 2014 around Taiwan; 363 people were drowned and 21 of them died of swimming. Taipei City Fire Department calls people’s attention to the personal safety and do not ignore all potential risks in water areas.