burns to the hands, the face, the ears and the eyes<\/a>. Other injuries include hearing damage from loud explosions and amputations. Above all though, mangled hands are the hospital\u2019s most common injury on Independence Day, he told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.<\/p>\nA common misconception is that sparklers are safer than fireworks.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany people view them [sparklers] as harmless, but sparklers can burn at temperatures approaching 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit,\u201d Davis-Partridge said.<\/p>\n
The Fort Lauderdale Police Department Bomb Squad showed just how quickly sparklers can cause serious burns using a chicken breast \u2014 which like human skin, has muscle, tendon and a layer of skin \u2014 to simulate the damage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe smallest fireworks can cause severe burns,\u201d said Lozada, adding that last year, of the people who sought emergency care due to firework-related injuries, 38% were burns.<\/p>\n
In the case of a minor burn, he recommends cooling the area under cold running water immediately after the incident for at least 20 minutes, then placing a clean and dry cloth on it. But if the burn is around the eyes, nose, ears, toes or fingers, regardless of the size, he urges families to seek medical care.<\/p>\n
If someone loses a finger or another extremity, Lozada advised covering the area with clean, moist gauze and placing the missing part in a sterile, ice-packed plastic bag until an ambulance arrives.<\/p>\n
![\"This](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/tfl-l-firework-combo-01.jpg\")
This combination of photos shows a chicken breast used to demonstrate how sparklers can burn skin, top left; a watermelon blown apart during a fireworks safety demonstration, top right; a model of a human hand blown apart, bottom left; and the remains of the model hand, bottom right, during a Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue presentation Tuesday at the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport Fire Station. (Joe Cavaretta\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just fireworks first responders are worried about. Police Sgt. Pat O\u2019Brien stressed another point: Don\u2019t fire guns.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery year across the country, some people choose to celebrate the holiday by firing guns into the air,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is not only illegal, but it\u2019s extremely dangerous. You must always remember what goes up, must come down.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said every bullet fired into the air eventually returns to the ground with enough force to seriously injure \u2014 even kill \u2014 someone.<\/p>\n
\u201cThose bullets don\u2019t disappear, they can strike children playing outside, families gathered at cookouts, neighbors watching fireworks or someone simply walking to their car,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Violators, he warned, risk arrest and prosecution.<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s celebrations could be especially intense. With the Fourth of July marking the nation\u2019s 250th birthday and the World Cup playoffs, Lozada expects more people celebrating, and with that, the potential for more injuries.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s just a mixture of a lot of reasons to be celebrating, and that\u2019s great\u2026 but at the same time there can be some bad decisions that are made in the brief moment that have long-term or lifelong consequences,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, according to Davis-Partridge, the safest way to enjoy fireworks is to attend a professional display<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Explosives don\u2019t discriminate between produce and fingers. At a fireworks safety demonstration ahead of the nation\u2019s 250th birthday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325112,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[134467,506,112,28,29,249,251,250,571,114,266,115,109],"class_list":["post-325111","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fort-lauderdale","tag-all-readers","tag-broward-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-florida","tag-florida-news","tag-fort-lauderdale","tag-fort-lauderdale-headlines","tag-fort-lauderdale-news","tag-health","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-social"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325111","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325111"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325111\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325112"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325111"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325111"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325111"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/tfl-l-fourth-of-july-demo-02.jpg\")
A watermelon is blown apart during a Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue fireworks safety demonstration on Tuesday at the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport Fire Station. (Joe Cavaretta\/South Florida Sun Sentinel)<\/p>\n