Hospital Crews Ready for Fourth of July Weekend

Emergency room crews at are preparing for a busy Fourth of July weekend.

But it’s not necessarily because of what you think.

Fred Rothenberger, an emergency room doctor with the hospital, said firework-related injuries have significantly decreased during the last 10 or 15 years, leaving alcohol-related injuries the norm.

Add into the mix the forecasted sweltering heat, and Rothenberger said emergency room personnel could be in for an extremely busy weekend.

“I saw that (Friday) is supposed to be up near 100 degree heat and if that’s the case, we’ll get a ton of heat related injuries over the weekend,” he said. “The heat exhaustion starts to kick in.”

But that’s not to say there won’t be any firework-related incidents, most commonly for finger, eye and facial injuries.

“We’ll see some firework-related stuff,” he said. “Some of it is preventable. Some of it is just bad luck and unfortunate.”

Rothenberger said parental supervision and a crackdown by police has led to the decrease in firework-related injury.

Still, he warned residents to take the utmost caution when dealing with the explosives.

“Most of it is just commons sense stuff, though,” he said.

According to a report by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, CPSC staff received reports of three fireworks-related deaths and an estimated 8,600 fireworks-related injuries treated in U.S. hospital emergency departments in 2010.

Burns were the most common injury.

The parts of the body most often injured were hands and fingers (estimated 30 percent); legs (estimated 22 percent); eyes (estimated 21 percent); and head, face,and ears (estimated 16 percent), the report found.