SAVANNAH, Ga (WSAV) — With New Year’s Eve falling on a weekend this year, emergency room doctors are gearing up to treat a significant number of holiday-related accidents. 

“So, when you have holidays that occur on a weekend, it is definitely an increased number in patients that will show up. If you take a New Year’s Eve or a Christmas, 100% you’re more concerned because there’s just more people out and about and they don’t have to work,” said Dr. Jay Goldstein. 

Dr. Jay Goldstein with Memorial Health says their emergency room saw a lot of knife and kitchen accidents on Christmas–but now focusing on the new year, they expect to see a lot of fireworks accidents. He says even smaller fireworks like sparklers can be dangerous. 

“There’s certain types of clothes that will catch fire more than other ones, especially, you hear about sparkler injuries, they ignite on a piece of clothing, that clothing causes burns. If you have more than a palm-sized burn then that’s a significant burn and something that needs to be addressed pretty quickly,” he said. 

And as far as drunk driving accidents–he says better safe than sorry. 

“The legal limit is .08 in the state of Georgia and even at levels below .08 you can still be an impaired driver. So, the general knowledge is one drink per hour is what it takes to essentially detoxify from the alcohol, and we would say that if you’ve had more than that kind of limit—we would say one drink–you probably shouldn’t be driving these days,” Dr. Goldstein said. 

Dr. Goldstein stresses safety, but says an increased number of emergency responders will be on-call at memorial health, and ready to treat people.