The Internet was abuzz Monday with the news that a Long Island,
N.Y., resident
lost his arm in a Fourth of July fireworks mishap:
Grim-faced relatives yesterday told a critically injured Long
Island dad that doctors wouldn’t be able to reattach his left
arm — which he had blown off with illegal fireworks…
.
Smith had been trying to shoot one of the explosives from a
makeshift launcher in front of his Fairview
Avenue home in Islip Terrace shortly before 6 p.m. Saturday
when it fired into his shoulder, authorities said… .
To anyone familiar with fireworks, the key phrase there
is “makeshift launcher.”
Another story clarifies the situation slightly:
A man blew his left arm off after illegally using fireworks
Saturday evening in Islip Terrace, Suffolk County police said.
Eric Smith, 36, was shooting mortars out of a
three-foot-long metal tube …
This story caught my attention because, as the
world’s greatest pyro-dad, I’ve shot thousands of consumer
fireworks mortar shells, which are no more than 1.75
inches in diameter and certainly not powerful enough to blow
off anyone’s arm. The launch tubes are usually 12 inches
but at most 15 inches long, and are made of either
fiberglass, heavy-duty cardboard or, ideally, high-density
polyethylene (HDPE).
So this detail about a man being critically injured
while firing a shell from a “three-foot-long metal tube” aroused
my suspicion, and I was not alone. At the PyroUniverse
forum — a favorite site for fireworks buffs, both amateur
and professional — the “shocking lack of . .
. information” in press accounts was noted, and
one of the contributors reported:
I went to school with this guy, he graduated a year ahead of
me, it was a 4” mortar.
Which is to say that it was a professional-grade shell,
classified as a “1.3G” explosive, the possession of
which by a non-licensed person is a federal
crime. Because New York prohibits consumer fireworks
(classified as “1.4G”) press descriptions of Smith as using
“illegal” fireworks might have left readers with a mistaken
impression.
The failure of reporters to make such distinctions are typical of
how the press routinely misrepresents fireworks safety
issues. While complete data on fireworks-related injuries are
unavailable, there is evidence that banning
consumer fireworks actually increases risk. Some injuries
occur when individuals (usually in states that prohibit consumer
fireworks) attempt to rig up their own homemade devices,
as happened
Sunday near Seattle:
A 64-year-old SeaTac man was sent to Harborview Medical Center
with critical injuries on Sunday after being hurt by exploding
homemade fireworks, according to the King County Sheriff’s
office.
A 52-year-old man who lived in the same house as the victim had
built a homemade “aerial device” by tying together a bundle of
sparklers. The man put the device inside a concrete cinder
block to brace it, sheriff’s deputies said.
But the homemade rocket “exploded in place, sending pieces of
the concrete block in all directions,” the sheriff’s office
said. The victim was standing about 15 feet to 20 feet away and
was hit in the head by a chunk of the concrete block. His
injury was life-threatening, according the sheriff’s
department.
Another risk that may result from banning consumer
fireworks, as illustrated by the Long Island incident, is that
people may resort to obtaining illegal access to professional
fireworks on the black market. (Friends tell me
that this especially seems to be a problem in New York,
for some reason. This may be related to corruption in New York’s
heavily unionized transportation sector: “It fell off the
truck.”)
Used as intended and with common-sense precautions, consumer
fireworks are in fact safer than your backyard barbecue, as
I
reported four years ago for Reason magazine:
In recent years, sales of consumer fireworks have skyrocketed,
even as injury rates have fizzled.
According to federal data compiled by the American Pyrotechnics
Association (APA), while U.S. fireworks sales increased roughly
eight-fold from 1976 to 2004—from 29 million pounds to over 236
million pounds per year—estimates of annual fireworks-related
injuries decreased from 11,100 in 1976 to 9,600 in 2004.
Fireworks injuries are relatively rare, accounting for an
estimated 0.01 percent of annual U.S. injuries, according to an
APA analysis which found that injuries from cooking ranges are
four times as common as fireworks injuries… .
The title of that article is the best possible safety advice,
found on the label of every consumer fireworks item sold in the
United States: “Light
Fuse, Get Away.”
