EDITORIAL - Holiday safety

With New Year’s Eve approaching, an 11-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl have become the first reported victims of firecracker injuries. Only the boy directly handled a firecracker; health personnel reported that the girl was merely watching a fireworks show and apparently caught ash in her eye.

If the rate of injuries keeps up, the total number will be significantly lower by the time the New Year revelry is over. This indicates a positive trend in holiday safety consciousness. By this time in previous years, the nation usually had seen at least one firecracker manufacturing site or retail outlet destroyed in a fire or explosion, often accidentally set off by a lighted cigarette carelessly discarded. The number of firecracker-related injuries in the days before Christmas was also higher in previous years.

Between Dec. 21 last year and Jan. 5, 2012, the Department of Health recorded 1,021 injuries attributed to the holiday revelry. Of the number, 987 were due to handling firecrackers and five from ingesting them. Four victims died from the injuries.

This season the figures for the injured are considerably lower, indicating that campaigns for safe revelry may be working. The firecracker industry has reported lower sales in the past years as Filipinos increasingly cut down on household fireworks consumption. This is partly due to safety concerns and rising costs of quality products. Watching fireworks in common areas is also catching on as local governments, shopping malls and other groups sponsor the displays.

What still needs to be curbed is the firing of guns to welcome the New Year. Of the 1,021 injuries reported in the previous holiday season, 29 were due to stray bullets, with one fatality. Law enforcement authorities are supposed to keep ballistics records of every gun in this country, which facilitates tracing of a gun when ammunition is discharged. But there is no such detailed record keeping and there are too many loose firearms all over the country. This makes injuries and even death from stray bullets one of the biggest hazards during the holiday merrymaking.

Filipinos are becoming more safety-conscious in the holiday revelry. The government must complement this with better enforcement of gun laws.