Deepavali night safety: Visakhapatnam allows crackers only from 8 pm to 10 pm; first aid and the numbers to call

Visakhapatnam has a two-hour cracker window on Deepavali night, Sunday, 8 November: 8 pm to 10 pm, City Police Commissioner Shanka Brata Bagchi has said. Police teams will run checks across every station in the city, and traders who break the rules face action. For families heading out with sparklers and rockets, Deepavali night safety comes down to three things: the clock, the kind of cracker, and knowing what to do in the first minutes after an accident.

The commissioner’s conditions for sellers are just as specific. Only green crackers may be sold. Stalls must stand at least 15 metres apart and at least 100 metres from any hospital, school or place of worship, and each needs clearances from the electricity department, the fire services and the Greater Visakhapatnam Municipal Corporation. Nobody under 18 may be sold crackers.

Across Andhra Pradesh, a pollution control board circular signed on 23 October by member secretary S. Srisaravanan permits only CSIR-NEERI-certified green crackers in towns where air quality is moderate or better. It keeps the ban on joined “series” crackers and on crackers containing barium salts, and leaves the hours to existing court and government orders. In Hyderabad, City Police orders in 2023 and 2024 kept bursting on streets and in open public spaces to the same 8 pm to 10 pm slot.

First aid for burns and eyes

The Union Health Ministry’s 2026 firecracker guidelines, drawn up by the ministry’s health services directorate, put cooling first: let cool tap water run over a burn for 10 to 20 minutes, and keep ice, butter, oil and toothpaste off it. Rings and bangles should come off before the skin swells, and cloth stuck to the wound should be cut around, not pulled. The steps are set out in full in our Deepavali burn care guide.

For the eyes, the guidelines ask for the eye to be flushed with clean, cool water for 15 to 20 minutes while the lids are held open. The eye must not be rubbed, and the patient should see an eye specialist without delay. People with asthma or other breathing illnesses are told to stay indoors, and the law bans any cracker that exceeds 125 decibels measured 4 metres away.

The ministry asks families to call 112 or go straight to hospital when a burn is bigger than the patient’s palm, is on the face, eyes, hands or groin, or when the patient is a child or elderly. Alongside 112, fire emergencies go to 101, police to 100 and ambulances to 108.