KIRO host stunned at grade of fireworks average person can buy in WA as injuries at Harborview up 65%
Jul 6, 2026, 2:55 PM
Firework-related injuries at Harborview Medical Center jumped 65% compared to last year, with 86 people treated over the holiday.
KIRO fill-in host Mike Lewis said when he moved to Washington, he was shocked at the scale of fireworks available for sale.
“I moved up here in 2000, so it’s been a long time, but when I lived in California, when the fire danger was so critical, even back then, that fireworks, even the safe and sane type, were banned in virtually every county,” he said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “I don’t even know if there’s a county that you can get those anymore, but they also didn’t have the big industrial military-grade fireworks at the tribal reservations in California, and so when I got up here, I was stunned at the grade of fireworks that the average person can buy.”
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Mike said his friend is a former Harborview nurse who told him they prepped for the Fourth of July.
“He said it’s weird. The weird thing about it is you’re going to get a whole bunch of injuries. It’s also the biggest burn center in the Pacific Northwest, so particular to Fourth of July, you’re going to get a lot of people from a lot of different places, including other states,” he explained.
Mike noted that while the injuries are horrific, it is an ample teaching day for new medical staff.
“There’s not a silver lining in this, but he said the only thing is that it’s also a teaching hospital, right? Everyone forgets that about it. He said it’s weirdly this is a chance for people who are learning how to do this sort of treatment; they bring them in and they’re learning actually how to help people who have had some sort of serious burn or serious explosion-related injury,” he said. “He wasn’t justifying any way, but he said this is the way Harborview is on Fourth of July every single year — they know it’s coming, they wish it didn’t, but they know it’s going to happen.”
Watch the full discussion in the video above.
