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Fireworks are out of control in L.A. Here are 5 things experts wish you knew
One thing I still can't get used to living in L.A. is the Bayhem-level of firepower Angelenos bring to bear on the Fourth of July.
My neighbors have already started setting them off.
By all accounts — and there are many — we are living in the illegal firework capital of the United States. That's not just because all fireworks are illegal in the City of Los Angeles, which the doctors, public safety officials and pollution experts I talked to about their dangers are at pains to point out.
Many immigrant Angelenos come from cultures where DIY fireworks are common, and we're an easy drive from places where they're cheap and legal. With few exceptions, the penalty for setting off professional-grade pyrotechnics is small and difficult to enforce.
Nationwide, the problem is much bigger now than it ever was. In 2024, almost 15,000 Americans were treated for firework-related injuries — a jump of more than 50% from the year prior, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In 2025 alone, Cal Fire and its partner agencies have confiscated more than 600,000 pounds of illegal fireworks.
Still, the folks who most want you to stop buying M80s — city managers, ER doctors, Smokey the Bear — know their pleas fall on deaf ears. The quest to save fingers, lungs, palm trees and the state budget from fireworks was described to me as 'quixotic' and 'Sisyphean.'
Even January's firestorm is unlikely to tame our passion for pyrotechnics, they said. At least one expert told me he thinks 2025 will be 'worse than it's ever been,' describing fireworks as a kind of Freudian pressure valve for communities on edge.
Here are five things experts wish you knew about your cache of emotional-support explosives.
'We have among the worst air quality in the country on the night of July 4 into July 5,' Dr. Scott Epstein of the South Coast Air Quality Management District said. 'Over the past 15 years, we have seen an upward trend.'
Remember those two dozen semitrucks worth of confiscated fireworks I mentioned earlier? Golden State taxpayers foot the bill to ship them to Ohio, Hawaii and Massachusetts to dispose of.
'Think about packaging up a couple thousand pounds of fireworks and sending them to Ohio — it's going to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars,' said Cmdr. David Barrett, head of MySafe:LA.
Multiply that a couple hundred thousand times, you're looking at a budget black hole.
'The number one thing kids tell us is: 'We don't want fireworks, but our parents bought them,'' Barrett told me.
'The message doesn't need to be for kids, it needs to be for parents,' he said. 'Something like: 'How do you feel about your kid having four fingers?''
'The things I've seen the most are loss of a finger or a hand, or severe damage to the eye,' said Dr. Jeremy Swisher, a sports medicine doctor in the orthopedics department at UCLA. 'Burns are the most common.'
Many of those burns come from sparklers.
'When it's over 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, holding it for a few seconds can cause a lot of damage,' the doctor explained. 'It can cause deeper burns into the skin, which can lead to the need for skin grafting, many surgeries and needing to stay in the hospital for a week or more.'
'If you look forward to the next three years, we have the World Cup, the Super Bowl, and the year after that we have the Olympics,' Barrett said. 'They're all summer events, so the potential for out-of-control fireworks is significant.'
'The last thing we need is for the Hollywood Hills to burn down because of fireworks.'
Today's great photo is from Times contributor Yasara Gunawardena. This year's jacaranda bloom in L.A. was short a few trees following the January wildfires, but experts say many burned trees will recover.
Kevinisha Walker, multiplatform editorAndrew Campa, Sunday writerKarim Doumar, head of newsletters
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