Since the loss of his left eye, while celebrating Fourth of July along with his own family, Metro Detroit TV weatherman Dave Rexroth has taken on a new role inside the lives of people who watch him. 
For the ones facing the uncertainty and frustration of dropping an eye to ailment or injury, he offers hope that life with unmarried vision can still be lively and independent.
“There became a period of trauma and recuperation, each bodily, mentally and spiritually, but matters are just similar to they’ve always been,” he says.
Providing for his family was a prime problem after the fireworks blast that knocked him to the ground and left him in shock in Iowa City, Iowa in 2014.
Fast ahead, and he correctly drives himself and is working into a 2d decade as chief meteorologist at WXYZ-TV Channel 7, coordinating live climate publicizes.
His outcome is what he hopes for others. He calls it “his duty” to ship inspiring playing cards and take smartphone calls to provide assistance, and the twist of fate has given the married father of three a unique angle about fireworks.
Rexroth says he’s been approached with the aid of fireworks warring parties from multiple states hoping he’ll be the face of their campaigns. But he’s not fascinated.
“I don’t need to be that individual to inform people what they can and can not do,” he explains of the usage of fireworks. “I don’t especially tell human beings they need to now not, but I inform people I by no means will once more and my circle of relatives never will again.”
Fireworks remain a part of Independence Day celebrations; however, below a new Michigan regulation, there are fewer days of revelry.
Residents can shoot fireworks June 29-July five until 11: forty-five p.M. Each night, and on Labor Weekend, however, professionals urge celebrating thoroughly.
Christine Nelson, M.D., chief of oculoplastic surgical procedure at University of Michigan Kellogg Eye Center, says fireworks are a volatile thrill excellent left to the specialists.
Fireworks-associated eye accidents rose from 700 in 2016 to at least one,200 in 2017, in keeping with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Those accidents protected ruptured eyeballs and broken corneas and retinas. Numbers display males are injured greater regularly than women.
On average, 280 human beings visit the emergency room every day with fireworks-associated accidents in the month around the July 4th holiday, in keeping with the CPSC.
Most accidents are caused by legal fireworks, which include sparklers, firecrackers, bottle rockets and Roman candles, in line with the American Academy of Ophthalmology.
For Rexroth, I was strolling again to check on a firework that wasn’t igniting proved to be a mistake.
“I went to check on it, and it went off in my face,” he says.
Discussion about this post