‘All of the sudden, it just blew up’; handheld firework explodes, burns woman

JACKSON COUNTY, Miss. (WLOX) - One Ocean Springs resident traded the firework fun, for firework fear.

Last night around 8 p.m., a Roman candle gone wrong put Emily Blanchard in the emergency room — and she isn’t the only one.

“All of the sudden, it just blew up and backfired,” Blanchard says.

Blanchard and her boyfriend bought two fire lollipop Roman candles. After lighting and enjoying the first one, the second one was lit.

Only a few moments passed before a fun night ended in tears, and pain.

“I could see that I had all my fingers. I was just gripping my hand because it hurt so much, and I was like I can’t hear anything; I can’t really see... I was freaking out and my boyfriend was freaking out because he thought I lost my hand,” Blanchard explains.

Blanchard shared photos of the fireworks post-accident to hopefully prevent this from happening to someone else. One of the photos shared was the area of the Roman candle labeled “HOLD HERE.”

“People shouldn’t be holding the fireworks when they are trying to shoot those, we see hand injuries all the time. We saw a couple of hand injuries yesterday that had to be transferred for operative repair,” Dr. Gregory Patino says.

Dr. Patino has seen two decades of Fourth of July emergency room visits at the Singing River Health System’s Pascagoula Hospital.

“I’ve gotten some reports back, I know we had at least two injuries yesterday from explosions, people again trying to hold them in their hand before letting them go, and it just didn’t work out because you can’t really time when those are going to explode,” he says.

Other common mishaps include fireworks tipping over, shooting into crowds, and even eye injuries if people fail to wear protective glasses.

“Looks like for the future, probably not going to buy any handheld ones. We’re not going through that again,” Blanchard jokes.

Blanchard says she was out of the ER by 11 p.m.

She suffered burns on her hand, arm, and side, but is expected to fully recover after being treated.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, about 9,700 people were treated for firework injuries at ERs in 2023. There were eight deaths.

Firecrackers accounted for 800 injuries that required emergency room treatment. Another 700 were injuries from sparklers.

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