Thinking of lighting that firecracker? Don’t. Just don’t. There are other ways to make noise to celebrate the coming of the New Year; honk your car if you have one, bang your pots and pans or iron gate, buy those cheap paper trumpets, play your phone’s ringtone at its loudest ad nauseam—anything that makes sufficient raucousness to contribute to the general din at midnight, but one that should not cause you or your loved one any form or injury, or, worse, death.
You may think the odds are slim that you’d be part of the grotesquerie that invades the television screens at this time, with bloody stumps for fingers on crying children, or grown men sprawled on hospital beds bawling over a severed limb from a firecracker that exploded too early. Well, the odds are those people also thought the same way as you do—that the powerful piccolo they were lighting up was perfectly safe, until tragically proven otherwise.
There is a reason the piccolo, a small but deadly firecracker, is banned by law, its sale considered illegal: Of the 128 cases of firecracker-related injuries recorded so far by the Department of Health from Dec. 21 to 29, about 76 percent is traceable to this lethal firecracker. Between Dec. 21, 2014, and Jan. 5, 2015, a total of 860 injuries were reported, with 840 caused by firecrackers; 67 percent of that was due to the piccolo, with majority of the incidents involving males—and not just any male, but the vulnerable ones: 32 percent were children below 10 years old and below.
Some 34 of those cases resulted in blast injuries so severe that they required the amputation of fingers and/or limbs; a further 125 led to eye injuries. Of course, the more directly involved people were in igniting the firecracker, the higher the risk; 62 percent of those injured lighted the deadly toys themselves, which had them eventually spending the New Year in miserable condition in the hospital—mutilated, in pain, and welcoming the turn of the year with unexpected expenses.
Not a pretty sight by any means. But it remains a wonder why people still continue to buy firecrackers, and even allow their kids to play with them. Worse are the trigger-happy, often booze-addled, revelers who fire their guns into the air, unmindful of the possible deaths or injuries their criminal, irresponsible actions could cause. As of Dec. 29, a nine-year-old girl in Bulacan has already died from a stray bullet traced to indiscriminate firing last Christmas Eve. That figure is sure to rise in the run-up to midnight of New Year, the deadliest hour when the toxic combination of unbridled partying and the need to show off results in gun-toting idiots rending the air with gunshots—and more reported cases of accidental deaths by the sober light of day.
Other countries have found a way to finesse this primal need to make noise and revelry on New Year by the simple act of banning firecrackers altogether and the government (with help from the private sector in some cases) instead hosting a central fireworks display under safe and strict supervision by experts, in a public place where residents could congregate without fear of getting injured by stray firecrackers or bullets. That’s what happens in places such as New York, London or Sydney—and their New Year cheer doesn’t appear to be any less. Why can’t we do the same here?