More views of the 2025 fireworks over Seattle here
Seattle’s Harborview Medical Center predicted it would treat more than 50 serious fireworks injuries from the Independence Day weekend’s festivities. As of Monday, it had treated 52.
As the only facility providing Level I trauma services for Washington, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, Harborview knows what it is talking about when it comes to July 4th.
“We’re going to see a lot of people who completely changed their lives because they made one simple, bad decision and now either they’ve lost a hand, they’ve lost their eyes, they’ve lost another appendage or worse,” Dr. Arvin Akhavan, an emergency medicine physician at UW Medicine in Seattle, said about Harborview’s yearly totals.
The 2025 injuries came in right at Harborview’s typical average in recent years.
They also came amid a peculiarly prominent trend on American social media this year with MAGA and libertarian accounts celebrating illegal fireworks displays in major cities — “I’ve never seen it lit up like this!”
Maybe so, but the Harborview totals — 21 involving hands, 14 injuring eyes, plus 17 more involving “multiple areas” and “other body areas” — should be proof that there are better ways to celebrate “freedom.”
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