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AURORA, Colo. (KDVR) — This long holiday weekend, doctors at the UCHealth Burn Center on the Anschutz Medical Campus are seeing an increase in the number of fireworks, campfire and grill injuries.

“The number of burn injuries has gone substantially up compared what I’ve seen in years past,” said Dr. Patrick Duffy, a UCHealth burn surgeon. He said the last two years have been particularly busy.

“We were certainly involved with responding to a number of people who lost parts of fingers and hands and what not for having fireworks go off while they were holding them,” Duffy said.

Surprisingly, one of the more common injuries he is seeing is from sparklers.

“Even those simple little sparklers can wind up leading to severe burns that require surgery,” he said.

Duffy said not to leave children alone with sparklers and to be careful around all heat sources.  

“We also see a lot of people who wind up drinking and celebrating around campfires and falling into the campfires,” he said.

There were also some injuries from propane grills.

“If people go to relight the grill without opening the lid and airing out that propane that’s filled there, essentially you are turning your propane grill into a giant bomb,” Duffy said.

He hopes as the summer continues that residents will take precautions and leave the fireworks to the professionals.