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Los Angeles Times
12 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
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 How can we make this newsletter more useful? Send comments to essentialcalifornia@ Check our top stories, topics and the latest articles on
New York Post
27-05-2025
- New York Post
Homeowners find black bear sitting on kitchen stove after crashing through ceiling
It was a page straight out of 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears' when a black bear was found inside the kitchen of a Kentucky home after crashing through the ceiling. The incident happened in the early morning hours of May 21, when a game warden was called to a residence in Bell County regarding a black bear inside the home, according to a Facebook post by the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Law Enforcement page. Advertisement 'Upon arrival, the bear was located sitting on the stove in the kitchen,' the department shared. Images show the bear inside the home, curled up on the kitchen stove, and a large hole above in the ceiling. With assistance from a Bell County Sheriff's deputy, officials said the warden was able to 'run the bear out through an open door.' The department said after investigating, it was determined that the bear had climbed up a ladder outside and squeezed through an opening into the attic. Advertisement 'The bear then fell through the ceiling into the residence below,' the department concluded. 'Upon arrival, the bear was located sitting on the stove in the kitchen,' the Kentucky Fish and Wildlife Law Enforcement shared. Images show the bear inside the home, curled up on the kitchen stove, and a large hole above in the ceiling. 'Can you imagine walking into your kitchen half asleep to make a pot of coffee and there being a bear on your stove,' one person wrote in the comments on the images. Advertisement 'Must've been looking for his pic-a-nic basket,' another person wrote in a nod to cartoon icon Yogi Bear. 'The scary thing is how smart this bear is to figure out how to get in …..not your average bear,' another person commented. 'Smokey the Bear was just popping in to let you know that only you can prevent forest fires,' another comment read. It was not known if anyone was home at the time of the incident, and no injuries were reported.
Axios
15-04-2025
- Health
- Axios
OhioHealth joins national youth gun violence prevention campaign
The OhioHealth hospital system has joined over a dozen other health care organizations to form a national initiative to prevent youth gun violence. Why it matters: Firearms have been the leading cause of death for U.S. children ages 1-17 for three years in a row. Driving the news: The newly formed " Agree to Agree" campaign will share tangible actions that individuals and communities can take to reduce firearm injuries among children and teens. The big picture: Agree to Agree aims to "comprehensively address" the issue of gun violence with an apolitical message focusing as much on suicide and unintentional shootings as intentional shootings. Despite suicides making up the majority of gun deaths in America, Shay O'Mara, clinical VP of surgery for OhioHealth Clinical Enterprise, tells Axios that "people aren't talking about potential suicide and potential accidental injuries. All we hear about in the news is homicides." By the numbers: OhioHealth says it treated 423 gunshot wounds last year at its Central Ohio trauma centers and emergency departments. Between the lines: Unlike some movements based around legislation or political change, Agree to Agree is focusing largely on branding and marketing to reach common ground. The nonprofit Ad Council will lead outreach efforts, which O'Mara says is a crucial part of the program. "If you look back at their history — Smokey the Bear, drug campaigns, all the other things they've done — they have actually moved things forward and made a difference because it started a conversation and brought public awareness." Friction point: The campaign's coalition also includes gun owners, and O'Mara says "nobody's interested in" talking about banning or taking any guns. "We're not talking about owning or not owning a gun, we're talking about that gun being used on a child." Zoom in: Partner organizations are leading their own local outreach efforts. OhioHealth's first program will be a lock box giveaway at Grant Medical Center in June, which is Gun Violence Awareness Month.
CBC
11-03-2025
- Politics
- CBC
Karuk Tribe right to cultural burning affirmed in agreement with California
The Karuk Tribe of northern California recently became the first to reach an agreement with the California Natural Resources Agency and local air quality officials to practise cultural burns. Bill Tripp, Karuk Tribe's director of natural resources and environmental policy, said the agreement reflects the state's recognition of the community's sovereignty. "The whole fire exclusion paradigm has impacted our rights," Tripp said. "Now we get a lot of very large wildfires today and there's a lot of reasons for that, but fundamentally at the root of it all is the fact that it's been so long since some of these places have burned." He said they've been burning in and around their traditional lands since time immemorial and fire prevention campaigns such as Smokey the Bear instilled a fear of fire in society — one that has allowed for the accumulation of wildfire fuel. He also pointed to other contributing factors like extreme and unprecedented weather patterns and the Weeks Act of 1911, a federal law that established the eastern national forests and the first co-operative wildland firefighting effort, and outlawed some Native American fire management practices in the U.S. Tripp said historically, his people would have roughly 7,000 fires per year to burn off fuel such as dead branches and leaves and to help shape and regenerate the landscape. Indigenous stewardship In Canada, Natural Resources Transfer Acts in 1930 transferred control over Crown lands and natural resources from the Government of Canada to the provinces of Alberta, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Wildfire consultant Brady Highway, a member of Peter Ballantyne Cree Nation in Sask., said these agreements removed First Nations' right to steward their territory and that extreme wildfires impact their inherent rights. "We are dependent on the land, on a healthy landscape in order for us to hunt and, and fish and gather the foods and medicines that we need," Highway said. "Without a healthy environment, our inherent rights are being impacted." He said he considers the process of applying for burn permits similar to having a duty to consult the province, "when the province regularly imposes regulations, legislation, land use policies on us without that same courtesy of consulting with us." Firekeeper Joe Gilchrist, a member of Skeetchestn Indian Band near Kamloops B.C., recently attended a First Nations Emergency Services cultural burning workshop in Cranbrook, B.C., ahead of this year's wildfire season. He said burn permits are not always practical because it's difficult to set a date to have a fire. "If we did a cultural burn then we would go out on the land every morning and then we would know when it's time to burn," he said. "There's lots of different signs which can't necessarily be projected." He said he's seen wildfires become progressively worse since he was young. "There used to be a pattern where about every four to seven years you'd have a bad fire year," he said. "Just in the 2000s, you start to see that it's almost every year now that the fires are bad." Gilchrist said he supports the direction the state of California's taking and believes a similar approach to cultural burns could work here in Canada. He said fire prevention through cultural burns would be much less expensive than the cost of fire suppression. "[The land] needs fire to be healthy," Gilchrist said.
