She and I were scurrying about, screaming, and holding our heads. Her bratty brother! I now think back at what he was doing and cringe. He was shooting bottle rocket fireworks at us!
With the July 4th holiday this week, I had a flashback to my youth. I knew bottle rockets were dangerous, but….SPARKLERS CAUSE THE MOST INJURIES!
My surprise…I don’t know about you, but when I was a little girl, I LOVED playing with the sparklers, the ONLY firework I enjoyed. When I saw this infographic, I hadn’t thought about the burn hazards from the hot temperatures of a sparkler. Sparklers cause 31% of all fireworks injuries.
After researching the minimum standards for residential foster homes in Texas, I found that weapons, firearms, and explosive materials (such as fireworks) are generally permitted, however, with some specific restrictions:
If you allow explosive materials or “toys that explode or shoot“, you must develop and enforce a policy identifying specific precautions to ensure children do not have unsupervised access to them, including:
- Locked storage made of strong, unbreakable material;
- A determination that it is appropriate for a specific child to use the “toys that explode or shoot”; and
- The child must be directly supervised by a qualified adult.
Our July 4th tradition generally has been to go watch the large fireworks display in a nearby city, although last year was spent in the hospital before the investigation into our foster home began.
With city ordinances, and especially the probability of grass fires, we really haven’t used fireworks in the past few years.
We discovered this grass fire in our backyard last weekend. Scary!
