Taiwan is vulnerable to many natural hazards that cause major economic losses. This paper examines the evolution of the natural disaster management system in Taiwan and finds that this system has progressed from an ad‐hoc agency to a full government agency and the evolution had very strong relationship with the occurrence of mass disasters at that time. The first fundamental disaster management law‐the Disaster Prevention & Response Act (DPRA) was promulgated in 2000. It especially encourages the application of hazard mitigation technologies to reduce disaster losses. However, the operation of the disaster management system has continued to experience many problems in the past five years. Much still remains to be done to develop a mature disaster management system in Taiwan.