Fire hazard

Injuries on New Year’s Eve

Never let children handle fireworks unsupervised.

(Bild: stock.adobe.com/MandicJovan)

Emergency room instead of party fun: every year, New Year's Eve ends in hospital for some Austrians - often with serious injuries. Eyes, ears and hands are particularly at risk when setting off fireworks. How you can avoid accidents and act correctly in an emergency.

Burns and hearing damage are among the most common injuries on the last night of the year. Wounds to fingers, hands and sometimes even eyes are also the result if firecrackers or firework rockets explode too early. Scalds caused by spilling hot drinks, such as tea, punch or the popular Feuerzangen punch, often lead to gloom instead of a party atmosphere.

According to statistics, young men between the ages of 15 and 35 are among the most vulnerable group, as they often take risks and handle fireworks recklessly. Children are also often affected. They are curious, but cannot properly assess the risks and are usually too close to the scene.

Main risk from fireworks
In order to avoid such accidents, experts advise the conscious and responsible use of fireworks. One important rule is to only use tested and approved products that bear the CE mark. In addition, you should always follow the instructions for use and never set off fireworks in the vicinity of people. Safety goggles can prevent eye injuries and children should never handle firecrackers or rockets unsupervised. Alcohol on New Year's Eve is also a risk factor, as it impairs the ability to react and leads to reckless behavior.

The Austrian Road Safety Board (KFV) recommends the following measures when watching fireworks:

• To be on the safe side, only watch the event from a greater distance.
• Never stand in the direction of the rockets.
• Keep handbags closed. Rockets and firecrackers can ignite clothing. Watch out for hoods!
• Close windows, balcony doors and front doors so that "stray missiles" cannot enter the apartment or house and cause fires.
• Do not store any (easily) flammable materials in the immediate vicinity of the house that can be ignited by stray flames.
• Flammable materials on loggias and balconies are particularly at risk - clear these away on New Year's Eve!

Extreme caution is required when setting off rockets and firecrackers.

(Bild: Copyright: www.malte-reiter.de Adobe.Stock )

Setting off rockets and firecrackers is not only dangerous for your fingers. Explosions in the immediate vicinity can also cause acoustic trauma to the ears. A short blast of 135 dB or more is sufficient. Fireworks that "misfire" on the ground easily exceed the danger threshold. Symptoms such as roaring or hissing in the ears, a dull hearing sensation or acute hearing loss are an indication that fine inner ear hairs have been damaged. Tinnitus can also develop.

How to protect your ears 
In most cases, hearing returns on its own after a blast trauma, but at the first sign, further exposure to noise should be avoided and a doctor should be consulted to rule out more serious consequences. Of course, it would be even better to take preventative measures to protect your ears, as hearing care professionals emphasize:

• Children and young people in particular should use hearing protection, as their ears are especially sensitive. Earplugs are already good for this, but earmuffs are even better.
• If you don't want to do without firecrackers altogether, you can switch to fountains, firecrackers, sparklers or firecrackers, for example. These are harmless to hearing at a distance of one meter.

First aid for burns
What to do if something does happen? For minor burns, the pain can be alleviated by cooling the affected area with water for ten minutes. However, this should not be too cold, but lukewarm, as experts from the Red Cross recommend. Do not cool large areas of burns, otherwise there is a risk of hypothermia. In this case, call an ambulance immediately.

If the finger is missing
A severed finger is also a case for an emergency call. Until the paramedics arrive, you should treat the wound and stop the bleeding with a pressure bandage. Wrap the severed part of the body in as sterile a material as possible (triangular cloth or the rescue blanket from the first aid kit, freshly washed cloth handkerchief). Experts warn that severed limbs should not come into contact with ice or water.

Damage to the eyes
Fireworks can easily hit your eyes. While you can carefully remove smaller particles yourself with a clean handkerchief or cotton bud, you should refrain from doing this with larger foreign bodies. In this case, call the emergency services immediately.