Authorities urge people to stay safe during Fourth of July weekend

Fort Worth, Texas – Fourth of July is known to be stressful and busy for first responders as they receive increased number of calls during the day.

Fireworks and grilling combined with the heat increase the number of injuries and first responders often are unable to respond as fast as they should experts say.

“This Fourth of July will probably be a bit busier because it’s the weekend,” MedStar representative Matt Zavadsky said. “What we really want is for folks to have a great time celebrating. However, do it safely.”

“The injuries that we see typically that are related to fireworks are first, hand injuries. People either forget to let go or the fuse goes too quickly,” Zavadsky said “So, we see a lot of hand injuries. We also see a lot of eye injuries from the exploding projectiles and of course burns.”

“We had a very critical patient last year with burn injuries from an explosion from the fireworks and she was in critical condition,” Zavadsky added

Safety officials that when grilling, families should pay attention to what they are doing.

“Remember that these are opportunities where kids are going to be outside,” Zavadsky said. “We have had two cases over the last few years where a child had gotten burned because they touched the grill and in one case, they actually had some hot liquid on the grill fall onto their body.”

Zavadsky reminds that families should remember to take precautions in the North Texas heat.

“We’ve already seen over 150 patients that we’ve treated for heat-related illnesses and that’s under regular conditions,” Zavadsky said. “This is an outdoor activity. People are going to be at special events, family’s houses – so, we certainly do anticipate that number to go up this weekend.”

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