THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
MONDAY, JUNE 30, 201
FOURTH OF JULY
Fireworks create hazards
KELSIE JENNINGS
news@kansan.com
Firefighters at the Olathe Fire Department demonstrated hazards of using firew
As a watermelon exploded into the air and chunks rained down to the ground, Captain Mike Hall of the Olathe Fire Department said it shows what can happen to a person if they mess with explosive fireworks and get too close at the wrong time.
The watermelon explosion was part of an annual demonstration that the Olathe Fire Department puts on before the Fourth of July to remind people of the hazards of fireworks.
The department blew up watermelons with powerful explosives like an M-80 and a mortar shell stuffed down a tube, which shot out like a little cannon.
Hall led the demonstration and started off by searing a hot dog with a sparkler to show what a third-degree burn on the skin looks like. The hot dog turned charred and ashy where the heat had touched.
Jennifer Parks, the trauma and burn performance improvement coordinator at The University of Kansas Hospital, said a lot of patients come in with burns to the hands, arms and face, typically from hand-held fireworks such as sparklers. She said people tend to underestimate the dangers of them because they look fun, but they can burn up to 1200 degrees Fahrenheit.
"People think that sparklers are the smallest fireworks and they're most innocent, but those are the ones that actually cause the majority of the injuries and those injuries are typically to kids under the age of 15 because people think that those are the safest fireworks to provide to kids," Parks said.
While fireworks are a fun tradition they can be very dangerous and life-threatening when things go wrong.
Hall said that people watch videos on YouTube and get ideas and think it will be OK,but he warned that people need to respect the danger that fireworks possess.
"If you choose to do something, especially if it's illegal, and something bad goes wrong, well, every choice
has a consequence and you're responsible for that consequence and it could be minimal or it could be life-changing." Hall said. "You don't want one little silly choice to haunt you for the rest of your life."
One of the worst firework-related calls Hall remembers is when a man was killed in his home when a homemade firework went off from static discharge. The force of the blast was enough to knock the sheetrock down from the ceiling.
Fire Captain Inspector Paul Otto of Olathe said that based on his experience, the most common injuries are hand burns, but more serious injuries are caused when people light off a mortar shell in a tube.
The person lights the fuse and steps away, but oftentimes there's a delay in the explosion so the person will come back up to check the fuse or think the mortar is a dud, but then the mortar will suddenly go off while the person is standing over it.
Otto said the number of calls over the holiday for firework-related injuries in Olathe has gone down, but he thinks this might be because fireworks are prohibited in Olathe.
"A lot of times if they have regular firecrackers and they have hand injuries, they don't even call us because they know it's illegal and they stay at
home and try to fix it," Ot it's significant, they will ca to the hospital."
Parks said they expect a tients between July 3 and prepare for Fourth of July about a month in advance special training to the empscheduling extra staff in trauma and emergency de Parks said the number varies each year, but can be from a couple patients to 3
"It's busy, but it's what we its what we do, it's what trained to do," Parks said a passion for what we do, if we have one patient or patients. That's what we're there to take care of tients whether it's an accide or some bad choices."
Kelly Dahl, an education prevention specialist at T asity of Kansas Hospital, s majority of the patients w for firework-related injuri aged 15 to 24 and about are children aged 15 and y
Sometimes the accide alcohol or are just from p careless. Other times its tion of both.
Although the majority come in with minor in