Enjoy this horrifying government fireworks safety video
As the Fourth of July approaches, the Consumer Product Safety Commission unleashes another doozy of a fireworks safety warning.
Every year, as the US closes in on its fireworks-filled annual Fourth of July Independence Day celebration, the Consumer Product Safety Commission releases a safety video meant to encourage care and prudence with decorative explosives. The video for 2017 arrived on Friday and it should make you plenty wary of fireworks.
The "CPSC Fireworks Safety Demonstration 2017" kicks off in mild fashion with a message from acting chairman Ann Marie Buerkle warning consumers to leave professional-level fireworks to the professionals. It then quickly devolves (or elevates) into a series of vignettes featuring mannequins suffering grave injuries from sparklers and flying fireworks.
The CPSC warns that sparklers can burn as hot as a blow torch and professional fireworks can dispatch an entire watermelon with ease. The video will make you want to stick to smoke bombs and other innocuous items.
Though the video is both horrifying and entertaining, it has a serious purpose. The CPSC notes that an average of 250 people go to the emergency room in the US with fireworks-related injuries every day in the month surrounding the Fourth of July holiday. Most of those people have burns, with hands, fingers and heads taking the brunt of the injuries.
If a mannequin with a flaming firework stuck in its eye helps to prevent some damage, the video will have done its job.