An­na-Lisa Paul

Thou­sands of ea­ger pa­trons who turned up at Pier II, Ch­aguara­mas, on Sat­ur­day to cel­e­brate the cul­mi­na­tion of the Chi­nese Lantern Fes­ti­val by light­ing a wish lantern and float­ing it in­to the night sky, were left dis­ap­point­ed when fire of­fi­cers at the event de­nied them per­mis­sion to do so.

Pres­i­dent of the Chi­nese As­so­ci­a­tion, Clyde Al­lum said they were in­formed of the Chief Fire Of­fi­cer's (CFO) de­ci­sion late on Fri­day. Al­lum said they were hop­ing that "some con­ces­sion would have been made. We tried down to the last hour hop­ing to get some ac­com­mo­da­tion but noth­ing."

Al­lum said the CFO Carl Williams "did not ap­prove the use of the wish lantern be­cause of con­cerns about the open naked flame." The sky lanterns, as they are pop­u­lar­ly known, are sim­i­lar to hot air bal­loons. In some Asian cul­tures, each colour cor­re­sponds to a par­tic­u­lar wish. They are tra­di­tion­al­ly con­struct­ed from oiled rice pa­per on a bam­boo frame, and con­tain a small can­dle or fu­el cell com­posed of flam­ma­ble ma­te­r­i­al.

When lit, the flame heats the air in­side the lantern, thus low­er­ing its den­si­ty and caus­ing the lantern to rise in­to the air. The sky lantern is on­ly air­borne for as long as the flame stays alight, af­ter which it sinks back to the ground. Al­lum said al­though the fu­el cell would have re­mained lit for ap­prox­i­mate­ly 15 min­utes, "Care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion had been giv­en to the lo­ca­tion cho­sen as it was away from neigh­bour­hoods and live­stock."

He said apart from the dis­ap­point­ing end, the pro­gramme which was held from 5 pm to 8 pm, went off with­out any prob­lems. This is the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year the fes­ti­val has been held in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Al­though they were de­nied per­mis­sion to light the wish lanterns, Al­lum as­sured that this would not de­ter the As­so­ci­a­tion from host­ing a third in­stall­ment.

"We may have to find an­oth­er way to end the event but we still in­tend to host our cel­e­bra­tions. It is a part of any cel­e­bra­tion but we may have to find an al­ter­na­tive way of do­ing the wish lantern or an ac­cept­able method. We may even have to take it out of our agen­da but we will dis­cuss that," Al­lum said.

"Even though we were dis­ap­point­ed, we are not go­ing to let it hold us back. We will host an­oth­er lantern fes­ti­val and this time, we will make sure we have the clear­ances so every­one would be hap­py with what we are do­ing."

Se­nior po­lice of­fi­cials in the West­ern Di­vi­sion yes­ter­day con­firmed while the As­so­ci­a­tion was not de­nied per­mis­sion to host the event, they were aware that fire of­fi­cials had not grant­ed per­mis­sion for the wish lanterns to be used as part of fi­nal dis­play.