Don’t light up

Two hundred forty-four, and counting. That’s the number of people injured by firecrackers and stray bullets as of yesterday morning. It may look like a tiny number against a national population that’s well over 90 million, but injury by firecracker is no simple incident. The injured are often children, left unsupervised or inexplicably allowed to indulge in this dangerous activity. And the bodily harm can range from painful burns to the loss of fingers, even a whole hand, as in the recent case of a 14-year-old boy in Cebu whose hand was shattered by an extra-powerful firecracker called “Super Yolanda.”

The morbid, fate-tempting humor underlying the act of naming a especially harmful firecracker after the most destructive typhoon to hit the country speaks volumes about the fatalistic attitude that overwhelms otherwise sober, sensible Filipinos in the run-up to the New Year. Injuries resulting from pyrotechnics are particularly frustrating because these are needless and easily preventable. People know the danger of the game but are still willing to play it, in the vague notion that a better year is heralded by fiery explosions in their faces.

Despite repeated warnings from the Department of Health and the Philippine National Police, the sale of firecrackers is booming, with heavy traffic reported on the route to the “pyro zone” of Bocaue, Bulacan. Correspondingly, according to the records of the National Epidemiology Center, the injuries recorded so far this year are now higher than the 179 tallied in the same period in 2012. The figure can only rise as the New Year revelry gets underway in a few hours.

The most worrisome firecracker is the “piccolo,” a product that’s been declared illegal for its deadly might. Of the total number of injuries as of Sunday morning, 62 percent were caused by this firecracker, with Manila, Quezon City and Mandaluyong as the top three cities in Metro Manila notching the biggest number of piccolo-related injuries. Data from the DOH show that 88 percent of the injured are males, and 32 percent are children below 10 years old. The kids, of course, can play with such destructive toys only with their parents’ consent, or lax attention. Children have no money to buy firecrackers on their own; the adults, therefore, should be held to account for whatever harm their kids end up sustaining.

What is to stop this annual madness? No pleas to sanity and safety seem to work with those dead-set on marking the end of the year with deadly fireworks—the louder, the better. It’s a bitter truth to consider that the injured reacquire their good sense only when they end up in hospital with badly mangled hands, or horribly burned skin. Asked what they had learned from the experience, they would sheepishly vow—too late—never to play with firecrackers again. Yet these horrific images are still not cautionary enough for those who remain foolhardy in their obsession with the lethal stuff. (And we’re not even talking yet about the madmen who fire their guns into the air…)

There’s a suggestion going around social media: Download or copy an audio file of firecracker explosions, and play it as the clock strikes 12 tonight. You can play the recording as loud as you want, and thereby not lose out in the putative decibel fight—but in a safe manner (though the effect the noise will have on our pets is another grim story). Give your family, especially your kids, the gift of safety and good example this New Year’s Eve. Don’t light up that firecracker.