The Chinese Lantern, they provide an inexpensive way of bringing wedding celebrations and parties to a spectacular and memorable close. They also appeal to the spiritual and romantic side of our nature, in the absence of religion.However, the increasing popularity of flying Chinese lanterns is also triggering emergency searches costing up to £10,000 because they are being mistaken for distress flares.
Coastguards have appealed to revellers to think again before launching the candle-powered lanterns, which can rise to 10,000ft, after 12 incidents this weekend alone.
They include three dealt with by Forth Coastguard, with one involving a lifeboat being launched to search the coast near Cockenzie in East Lothian.
In another incident, coastguard teams were scrambled following multiple reports of red and white flares at Bamburgh Castle, south of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on Saturday night.
Do you think they have the same problems in China, Hong Kong and Singapore? Where these lanterns are regularly used to mark birth, deaths and marriages.
Perhaps the Emergency Services should ask their Chinese colleagues what they do. Perhaps the Chinese have a better way of determining between a paper balloon, with 1 candle power and a genuine distress flare, allegedly.
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