Leave Fireworks to the Pros – and Enjoy the Show!

By John R. Hall, Jr., Ph.D., Assistant Vice President – Fire Analysis & Research,
National Fire Protection Association

I like Jerry Bruckheimer films. I like guys’ movies where lots of stuff blows up. So it’s no surprise that I’ve always been drawn to fireworks. The difference is that I know enough to be a part of the spectator group and not a part of the spectacle. Unfortunately, too many people don’t know this, and every year thousands, mostly children, pay the price.

In 2004, U.S. hospital emergency rooms treated 9,600 fireworks-related injuries. The trend in the number of injuries has been mostly up since 1996, with a sharp spike in 2000-2001 associated with the celebration of the new millennium. In 2003, the latest year for fire statistics, fireworks started an estimated 2,300 reported structure or vehicle fires, resulting in five civilian deaths and $58 million in direct property damage. And every year additional people die directly of fireworks injuries, without a reported fire. (All this is without considering multiple-death incidents such as the Station nightclub fire or the Ohio retail outlet fire of a decade or so ago. Discussion of all the factors involved in incidents like these would take another column at least.)

The industry likes to talk about how much fireworks usage has increased, as if a disfiguring injury is somehow more bearable if you got to fire off more devices before you were hurt. The truth is that fireworks have the highest death rate relative to person-hours of usage and exposure of any consumer product – but most people don’t notice because they put all their risk into a few hours a year. About one-quarter of the 2004 emergency room fireworks injuries – 2,300 injuries – occurred on one day, July 4, and more than half occurred over the four days of July 2-5. If we used fireworks as much as we use cigarettes, for example, our hospitals and morgues would be overflowing with victims, and we’d realize something had to change.

The majority of victims are children. The peak risk is typically in the 5 to 9 and 10 to 14 age groups. Here is our classic “attractive nuisance” and the classic at-risk population for such a nuisance. You may know enough to run away from a lit fireworks device, but a small child will be running toward it. Take a close look at those photos featuring fireworks that crop up this time of year. Look how close those innocent, clueless kids are to the lit end of a sparkler, if they aren’t shown holding it themselves, running around, out of control, waving it around.

And speaking of sparklers, 2004 marked the highest share of fireworks injuries for sparklers that I’ve ever seen – a full 21%, or 36% in combination with “novelties,” the other common entry on the misnamed “safe and sane” fireworks list. Take a look at some of the injuries involving simple sparklers in 2004:

• A 3-year-old boy and a 4-year-old boy stepped on lit sparklers and suffered second-degree burns, the latter developing into an infection.
• A 3-year-old boy burned his fingers on a lit sparkler.
• A 3-year-old girl was burned on the side of her head, and a 2-year-old girl suffered a second-degree burn on her left shoulder and neck.

And that’s not counting the sparkler on a 10-year-old girl’s birthday cupcake that ignited the bed skirt and set off a $1.6 million fire, extending to other apartments and their occupants, who in no way participated in the decision to take on this risk.

When I was a young teen, my cousin put a cherry bomb in a soda can. The explosion sent shrapnel into my hand. Today, you can’t legally buy cherry bombs, and my cousin and I are both Ph.D.’s and a lot smarter about what’s safe. But today’s kids still do things that are just as dumb and are just as convinced they’re invulnerable. The only way to keep them safe is to cut off their access to devices too dangerous to be around.

This is the part of these columns where the safety tips usually go, but there are no safety tips for consumer use of fireworks. When things go wrong, they go so wrong so fast that nothing and no one can prevent serious harm.

The best advice you can give your community is to go to a public display. There’s bound to be one nearby. The professionals putting on the display will keep the fireworks – and the risk – well away from you and your loved ones, and they’ll give brighter lights and bigger booms than amateurs could ever produce in their own backyards.

At NFPA, we understand that sometimes the only safe way to handle something dangerous is not to handle it at all. I wish you all a safe and enjoyable Independence Day, celebrated the right way, at a public fireworks display put on by professionals!