Bonfire Night Safety: Fire, Burns, and the People Who Dread the Bangs

5th November 2026

Written by Stephanie Austin, Owner & Lead Trainer, Prima Cura Training |Last reviewed: November 2026 | Next review: November 2027

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I was about ten when I watched a friend of mine pick up a sparkler by the wrong end.

We were at a Bonfire Night event in the town I grew up in. Her sparkler had burnt out, and she did what any child does with a thing that has stopped being interesting: she took hold of it. Not the handle. The end that had just been burning. I still remember the scream, and I remember her parents running over with a bucket of water they had brought with them, which turned out to be the best decision anyone made that night.

They didn’t stop there. They took her straight into the pub across the road and held her hand under the running tap in the bathroom, and they kept it there. The pub helped dress it afterwards. Her hand healed in about a week. What didn’t heal quite so quickly is that she has been frightened of sparklers ever since, and she is in her forties now.

Her parents got the important bit right, and it is the single most useful piece of information on this page: cool a burn under cool running water for 20 minutes, then cover it with cling film laid flat over the injury. Not ice, not butter, not a plaster. Twenty minutes of cool running water, started as soon as possible. The NHS says the same, and so does the Children’s Burns Trust, which publishes the Cool, Call, Cover guidance with the British Burn Association.

Everything below is the rest of what I’d want you to know before 5 November: how the fires actually start, what the law says, how to treat the injuries that turn up every year, and why for some people the best thing you can do is warn them what time you’re setting off.

The short version

• Burns: cool under cool running water for 20 minutes, call for help for anything bigger than a 50p coin, cover with cling film laid on flat.
• Sparklers: they burn at over 1,000°C and the spent end stays dangerously hot for a long time. Gloves on, one at a time, straight into a bucket of cold water when it’s done.
• Bonfires: never use petrol or paraffin, keep everyone at least 5 metres back, and check underneath before you light it.
• The law in England and Wales: no adult fireworks between 11pm and 7am, except on 5 November when you have until midnight. Under 18s cannot buy or possess them in public.
• Clothing on fire: stop, drop, roll. Running makes it worse.
• People: some of your neighbours, colleagues and residents will be dreading this night. A bit of warning and a bit of planning goes a long way.

What actually goes wrong on Bonfire Night?

It isn’t usually the big organised display that causes the problem. It’s the back garden.

London Fire Brigade took 831 emergency calls on 5 November 2025, the highest number on Bonfire Night since 2016 and a 20 per cent rise on the 690 calls taken in 2024. Bonfire-related calls alone were up 30 per cent. Closer to home for me, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service crews attended 270 incidents on Bonfire Night 2024, up from 178 the year before, with North West Fire Control handling 478 calls in a single night. Most of those incidents were uncontrolled or unattended bonfires.

The injury side of it shows up in a way I find quite telling. Over one Bonfire Night weekend, the NHS burns and scalds advice page was visited 8,208 times, roughly once every 21 seconds, which was 27 per cent up on a normal weekend. That figure is from November 2023, so treat it as an illustration of the pattern rather than this year’s number. But think about what it represents. That’s thousands of people standing in a kitchen at nine o’clock at night, holding someone’s hand under a tap, googling whether they’re doing it right.

That’s the gap I want to close.

How do you build and light a bonfire safely?

If you can go to an organised display instead, go. That’s the honest answer and every fire service in the country gives it. If you’re having one anyway, these are the parts people get wrong.

Site it properly. Away from fences, sheds, garages and overhanging branches. Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service recommends a barrier around the fire with everyone kept at least 5 metres back once it’s lit.

Build it late. A bonfire that sits in a garden or on open ground for a fortnight becomes a target for someone else to light, and a hotel for wildlife.

Check underneath before you light it. Hedgehogs, cats and children all climb into piles of wood. This takes thirty seconds and it is the check most people skip.

Only untreated wood. No treated timber, no furniture, no rubbish, no aerosols, no gas canisters, no tyres.

Never use petrol, paraffin or any other accelerant. This is where the flash burns come from, and they are some of the nastiest injuries of the night. Vapour ignites faster than people expect and it ignites back towards the container you’re holding. If you need an accelerant to get it going, the wood is too wet and you should not be having a bonfire.

Keep water there. A bucket, a hose, both. It is not a garden ornament, it is the reason my friend’s hand healed in a week.

Nobody leaves until it’s out. Not smouldering. Out.

What do you do if someone’s clothing catches fire?

Stop, drop and roll. As Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service puts it, running around won’t help. Stop where you are, drop to the ground, cover your face with your hands, and roll over and over until the flames are out. Then treat the burn as below, and call 999.

If it’s someone else, smother the flames with a heavy blanket or a coat if one is to hand, and get them on the ground. Do not let them run. Running feeds the fire and takes it past their face.

What is the law on fireworks in England and Wales?

A surprising number of people have no idea any of this exists, and the licensed trade in particular gets caught out by it.

Under regulation 7 of the Fireworks Regulations 2004, nobody may use an adult firework during night hours, defined as 11pm to 7am. There are four exceptions, and 5 November is one of them:

• 5 November: permitted until midnight
• New Year’s Eve, Chinese New Year and Diwali: permitted until 1am the following day

The House of Commons Library briefing on fireworks, updated in July 2026, sets out the rest of the position for England and Wales:

• Category F2 and F3 fireworks cannot be sold to anyone under 18, and nobody under 18 may possess fireworks in a public place.
• Category F4 fireworks can only be used by professional pyrotechnicians. The Health and Safety Executive is blunt about why: in untrained hands they can be lethal.
• Fireworks supplied to the public cannot exceed 120 decibels.

Fireworks also have to carry a UKCA or CE mark and come from a licensed seller. If they’re being sold out of the back of a van, that’s your answer.

Why are sparkler burns so common?

Because a sparkler doesn’t look like a weapon. It looks like a toy you give to a four year old in a Christmas card photograph.

Sparklers burn at more than 1,000°C, which West Midlands Fire Service compares to a welding torch. Three of them lit together produce roughly the heat of a blowtorch. And the part that catches people out, the part that caught my friend out, is that the wire stays hot long after the sparkle has stopped. It looks dead. It isn’t.

What actually keeps hands intact:

• No sparklers for children under five. That’s the RoSPA guidance and it’s there for a reason.
• Gloves on. Not gardening gloves with the fingertips worn through, proper ones.
• One at a time, held at arm’s length, lit at arm’s length, never waved near another person’s face.
• Never hold a baby or a small child while you’re holding a sparkler.
• A bucket of cold water, hot end down, the second it goes out. Leave it in there for hours. Lancashire’s crews suggest pushing the sparkler into a carrot and letting younger children hold the carrot, which sounds daft right up until you’ve seen a ten year old’s palm.

Look again at what happened to my friend. Her parents did nearly everything right. They had water, they knew to keep the hand under it, they kept it there instead of taking a look every thirty seconds. The one thing nobody had told anyone that night was that a burnt-out sparkler is still hot enough to do that.

How do you treat a burn from a firework or a sparkler?

This is the section worth reading twice, because burns are the injury you are most likely to be standing in front of on 5 November.

Cool. Cool running water over the burn for 20 minutes, as soon as you can and ideally within three hours of the injury. Cool, not icy. If there’s no running water, cool bottled water or a wet cloth will do until you can get to a tap. Twenty minutes feels like a very long time when someone is crying. Do it anyway.

Remove clothing and jewellery from around the burn, unless it is stuck or melted into the wound, in which case leave it completely alone.

Call. The Children’s Burns Trust and British Burn Association guidance is to get advice for any burn larger than a 50p coin: 999, 111 or your GP depending on how bad it is.

Cover. Once it’s cooled, lay cling film over the burn. Lay it on, don’t wrap it around, because the area will swell. A clean plastic bag works for a hand or a foot.

Keep them warm. This one gets forgotten and it matters enormously on a cold November night, especially with children. You are pouring cold water on a person who is standing outside in the dark. Blanket around the shoulders, cool water on the burn.

What you should never put on a burn

• No ice or iced water. It causes further tissue damage.
• No butter, oil, toothpaste or creams. The NHS is explicit about this.
• No plasters or sticky dressings.
• Don’t burst blisters. They are a sterile dressing your body made for free.

When does a burn need 999 or A&E?

Call 999 or get to A&E if the burn is large or deep, if it’s on the face, hands, feet, genitals or over a joint, if it’s a chemical or electrical burn, if the skin looks white, leathery or charred, if the person is a young child, an older person or pregnant, or if there is any suggestion they have inhaled smoke or hot gases. A burn that doesn’t hurt is not good news. It usually means the nerve endings have gone.

What about eyes and ears?

Eyes are the injury nobody plans for. The College of Optometrists states that around 300 people a year in the UK suffer serious eye injuries from fireworks, and that ten of them lose their sight.

If a firework or a sparkler injures someone’s eye, the advice is short and it is the opposite of most people’s instinct:

• Do not rub it.
• Do not rinse it (that advice is specific to firework injuries, and it is different from the advice for a chemical splash, where you flood the eye with water and keep going).
• Do not put drops, ointment or anything else on it.
• Get them to A&E or call 999 straight away.

Rubbing or rinsing a burned or penetrated eye can make the damage worse and make the specialist’s job harder.

On hearing, the 120 decibel legal ceiling for consumer fireworks is still loud enough to be uncomfortable at close range. Ear defenders for small children at a display cost very little and take the edge off the whole evening for them.

Why does Bonfire Night leave some people dreading it?

I want to talk about this properly, because it gets treated as a footnote and it shouldn’t.

A friend of mine served in the forces. Every year, without fail, Bonfire Night brings the flashbacks back. He has built himself a snug in his basement, and that’s where he goes on 5 November, because it is the one place in the house where the bangs are muffled and he feels safe. Some years he rings me, not because anything is wrong, but because talking to someone about something ordinary helps him stay in the room he is actually in.

He is not unusual. Combat Stress describes exactly this: a veteran who came under fire stays hypervigilant long after they come home, and a sudden bang can drop them straight back into the memory. It is not nerves and it is not being oversensitive. It’s a trauma response.

The NHS veterans’ mental health service, Op COURAGE, publishes advice for exactly this week, and it maps almost word for word onto what my friend worked out for himself:

• Plan the day. Decide in advance where you’ll be and what you’ll do.
• Know your triggers and set up against them: noise-cancelling headphones, music, blackout blinds.
• Ground yourself. Notice where you are, name what’s around you, tell yourself you are here and not there.
• Talk to someone. In person or on the phone, about anything at all.
• Remember it passes. It’s one night, and it ends.

Veterans aren’t the only people this lands on.

Autistic people. The National Autistic Society describes Bonfire Night as too noisy, unpredictable and unsettling for many autistic people, and unpredictability is the hard part. Their advice runs on planning it out in advance, ear defenders, a quiet room to retreat to, familiar food, and watching a display online if going out isn’t going to work. If you support autistic people at work, our Autism Awareness course covers the sensory side of this in detail.

People living with dementia. Sudden unexplained noise and flashing light at the window, in the dark, in a place that may already feel unfamiliar, is a recipe for distress. Closed curtains, lights on, a familiar programme on the television and somebody sitting with them makes an enormous difference. Our Dementia Awareness training deals with how to respond to that kind of distress without arguing with the person about what they can hear.

Anyone who has been in a fire, a blast or a serious accident. Bonfire Night doesn’t check your history before it starts.

The practical decency here costs nothing. Tell your neighbours what night and roughly what time you’re setting fireworks off. Ask first if you live near a care home, a stable or a veterans’ housing scheme. Finish at a sensible hour. Consider low-noise fireworks, which are a genuine thing and not a compromise on the display. And if you know someone who finds this week hard, text them on the day. My friend has never once minded the phone ringing.

If you are struggling yourself, Combat Stress runs a 24-hour helpline on 0800 138 1619 for veterans, and you can contact Op COURAGE directly yourself, or ask a family member, a friend or your GP to do it for you.

What about pets and animals?

The RSPCA points out that fireworks produce between 120 and 175 decibels, and that dogs and cats hear across a wider range and at greater sensitivity than we do. Animals can suffer tinnitus and lasting hearing damage, and horses and livestock injure themselves trying to get away from the noise. In the RSPCA’s 2024 survey, 66 per cent of pet owners named back garden displays as a major concern.

Keep pets indoors from late afternoon, close curtains, leave a radio or television on, and give them somewhere to hide rather than trying to coax them out of it. Never punish a frightened animal for hiding. If you keep horses, tell whoever is letting off fireworks nearby well in advance.

If your organisation is running a display or working that night

This is the half of the night that doesn’t make the safety leaflets, and it’s the half I get asked about most.

If you’re organising a display, the HSE’s guidance for organisers sets out the basics: a site big enough for fireworks to fall clear of spectators, a check for overhead power lines, an honest look at wind direction, a named person whose job is to call the emergency services, a bar kept well away from the firing area, and marshals who know what they’re supposed to do. Category F4 fireworks mean a professional operator, no exceptions. HSE also expects first aid provision to be signposted, which is where a lot of small community events quietly fall down: there’s a first aid kit in the boot of somebody’s car and no agreement about who’s using it.

Under the Health and Safety (First-Aid) Regulations 1981, your first aid provision has to be adequate and appropriate for the circumstances. A cold, dark field with open flame, a crowd and children is not the same circumstance as a Tuesday in the office, and your first aid needs assessment should say so. Our guide to workplace first aid in the UK walks through how that assessment works.

A few specifics worth planning for:

• Care homes and supported living. You have a building full of people who may not be able to evacuate quickly, some of whom will find the noise frightening. Plan the evening as carefully as you’d plan the display: who is with whom, which rooms face the fireworks, what the fire routine is if a stray rocket lands on the roof.
• Schools and nurseries. Sparklers at a school event need a named adult, gloves, a bucket and a hard rule about the spent ends.
• Pubs and licensed premises. Bonfire Night is a busy, cold, alcohol-heavy night with open flame nearby. Your door and bar staff are the people who’ll spot someone in trouble first, which is precisely what WAVE training for licensed premises is built around.
• Anyone with a marshal or warden role. Knowing how the fire triangle works, where your extinguishers are and what “evacuate” actually means on a dark field is the difference between a controlled evening and a chaotic one.

Frequently asked questions

Training that covers this properly

Bonfire Night pulls together three things Prima Cura teaches all year round: fire safety, first aid, and understanding people who are having a harder time than they’re letting on.

If you’re the person responsible for an event, a building or a team this November:

• Fire Safety Awareness covers how fires start and spread, extinguisher types and what to do when the alarm goes.
• Fire Marshal training goes further for anyone with a warden or marshal role, including evacuation and fire risk awareness.
• Emergency First Aid at Work is the one-day qualification that covers burns, unresponsive casualties and the rest of the emergencies that don’t wait for an ambulance. There’s also Basic First Aid for community groups and volunteers, and Emergency Paediatric First Aid for anyone working with children.
• First Aid for Mental Health Level 2 and Mental Health Awareness give your team the language to start the conversation with the colleague who goes quiet every November.

We deliver across England, face to face and remotely, and we’ll talk through what you actually need rather than selling you the longest course. Get in touch and we’ll sort it out.

And if you only take one thing from all of this: bucket of water, twenty minutes, cling film laid on flat. My friend’s parents worked that out in a pub bathroom in the 1980s. You’ve got the advantage of knowing it beforehand.

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This article is general information about fire safety, first aid and wellbeing around Bonfire Night. It reflects UK guidance and the law in England and Wales as it stood in November 2026, and both can change. It is not a substitute for hands-on first aid training, medical advice, or a fire risk assessment for your own premises or event. If someone is seriously injured, call 999. If you are responsible for an event or a workplace, take specific advice on your own duties.