Firecrackers cause major pain during festive season
Firecrackers and fireworks are still part and parcel of the festive season in Slovenia, but they proved very unfortunate for three children who sustained severe injuries over the New Year's holidays, CE Report quotes The Slovenia Times.
Although their use is strictly regulated and despite campaigns and authorities warning of the dangers and risks involved, pyrotechnics still cause injuries every year, mostly among minors.
Slovenia tightened pyrotechnics regulations in 2008, largely due to safety concerns. The law bans the sale, possession and use of category F2 and F3 fireworks whose main purpose is causing noise, while the use of small category F1 firecrackers is restricted to the period between 26 December and 2 January.
Use of pyrotechnics is also banned in dense residential areas, indoors, near hospitals, on passenger transport vehicles and in areas where public gatherings or events are held.
Violations of those rules, as well as the ban on the alteration of pyrotechnic devices to increase their effect carry fines of between €400 and €1,200.
Most victims and offenders among minors
Police handled 120 violations between December 2024 and 3 January this year, with minors involved in 115 cases. They seized a total of 6,049 pyrotechnic devices.
Eleven cases of injuries were recorded, three of which were severe, police and hospital officials told reporters on 6 January.
UKC Ljubljana, the country's largest medical centre, admitted four children under the age of 15 for fireworks-related injuries in a space of four days between 30 December and 2 January.
Three of the children sustained severe injuries. Two of them lost their hand - all the fingers and the palm - and one sustained severe injuries to their face and will most probably lose sight in one eye, as a sky rocket flew into his face.
The fourth child sustained minor injuries while trying to rebuild pyrotechnical devices.
"It's probably hard to imagine what losing your hand means to someone who is, say, eleven years old. It means being scarred or disabled for life, all because of a brief pleasure, if we can call it that," said Uroš Tominc, head of the UKC Ljubljana emergency surgery unit.
Even if the hospital has been seeing a slight drop in the number of injuries caused by pyrotechnics over the past decade, the number of severe injuries increased this time.
The police also recorded 20 cases of damage to property caused by fireworks and firecrackers, including two fires, one at a house in Ljubljana where damage is estimated €10,000 and another destroying a carport in Maribor that caused €25,000 in damages.
Online sale major issue
Banned pyrotechnic devices are mostly bought online by minors themselves, but there are also cases where the parents buy them, Sebastian Mohorič of the General Police Administration told reporters.
In a house search in the Novo Mesto area in the southeast, 646 banned category F2 and F3 fireworks were seized from a minor and in the Koper area on the coast 344 firecrackers were seized from a 13-year-old and a 14-year-old, and another 14-year-old was found with 477 pyrotechnics, while in Kranj, a 13-year-old had a total of 364 pieces of pyrotechnics in some of the major busts.
In the face of the injuries and continued use of the banned fireworks, an NGO called 8 March Institute has launched a petition urging the authorities to crack down on vendors selling banned firecrakers online.
The NGO believe the major problem is lack of oversight of online sale by vendors from abroad, who violate Slovenian and European legislation, as well as delivery companies who deliver them to buyers. Reporting the violators to the relevant authorities, they urged them to take appropriate action.
Banned fireworks aside, there have been calls for firework displays to be abandoned altogether with experts pointing out its impact on air pollution, in particular in Ljubljana, one of the cities where air quality was particularly poor in the days leading up to the New Year's Eve.
