4th of July

7/9/2019 (Permalink)

It’s that time of year again… the 4^th of July!! As much fun as this holiday can be, it can also cause a lot of disasters. Did you know that  thousands of people every year, mostly children and teens, are injured while using or being around fireworks. www.nfpa.com has some scary but useful facts we should all be aware of.

Fireworks by the numbers

• Fireworks start an average of 18,500 fires per year, including 1,300 structure fires, 300 vehicle fires, and 16,900 outside and other fires. These fires caused an average of three deaths, 40 civilian injuries, and an average of $43 million in direct property damage.  
• In 2017, U.S. hospital emergency rooms treated an estimated 12,900 people for fireworks related injuries; 54% of those injuries were to the extremities and 36% were to the head. Children younger than 15 years of age accounted for more than one-third (36%) of the estimated 2017 injuries. These injury estimates were obtained or derived from the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s 2015 Fireworks Annual Report by Yongling Tu.