This year, the lights were brighter, but quieter

This Diwali was less noisy, but was brighter and more colourful, if the sale figures of cracker dealers are any indication. Terrace fireworks emerged as the biggest winner, with Chennaiites voting for night fireworks, 30 to 120 shots and flowerpots as they all could be set off on terraces.
“Terrace crackers took the lion’s share this year,” said Shaik Abdullah of the Chennai Metro Fireworks Merchants Association.More colour and more light mean more pollution, as evidenced by the average air quality index recorded on Monday morning. Pollution scene was the worst in the past three years.
As against 185ppm in 2022 and 140 ppm in 2021, this year it shot up to 220ppm. Manali had the highest air pollution (327 ppm), followed by Velachery at 322ppm. According to the air quality standards, 301-400 means ‘very poor’ air quality that could cause respiratory illness on prolonged exposure.
If the AQI is between 201 and 300, then the air quality is ‘poor’, which could cause breathing discomfort to most people, and AQI from 101 to 200 refers to ‘moderate’ quality. Also, as noise-generating crackers like ‘atom’ bombs did not see brisk sale, the dayafter trash collected by the Greater Chennai Corporation and its contractors was less than previous years. Last year 270 metric tonnes of cracker waste was generated.
This year it was 210 tonnes, of which 29 tonnes was collected from Valsaravakkam, followed by 26.9 tonnes in Alandur. In Sholinganallur, 3.5 tonnes of waste was collected. Though 108 ambulance services saw nearly 45% increase in the number of people who were ferried to the hospital for medical emergency, most of them were for vehicle accidents or assault, and not for Diwali-time burns-related complaints.
From a daily average of 5,000 cases recorded so far this year, the GVK-EMRI unit recorded 7,292 ‘beneficiaries’ on the Diwali day. The average number of calls also rose to 20,700 from a daily average of 12,500. Noting that 2,566 vehicular trauma cases and 1,016 assault cases were reported, EMRI state head Selvakumar M said: “We had stocked up first-aid for cracker injuries and burns cases. But our staff ended up using the ones for accidents and assaults.”
The ambulances ferried 208 burn cases and 641 pregnancy-related cases. In Chennai, at least 11 people were admitted to two government hospitals – Kilpauk Medical College Hospital and Government Royapettah Hospital for treatment of burns. Besides this, there were 35 people treated for burns as outpatients.
Officials at EMRI said they worked out “Diwali hotspots” in the state along with the health department based on cases they saw in the last three years. “Areas where a number of fire, burns and assault cases since 2019 were recorded as hotspots.
Ambulances were deployed closer to these hotspots to reduce response time,” Selvakumar said. The eight shops set up by TUCS alone sold crackers worth `1.25 crore, as against less than ` 1 c ro re l a s t ye a r. Over the last six days, Teynampet recorded the highest sales of `65 lakh, followed by R A Puram and Adyar