CHENNAI: As many as 544 people sustained injuries from bursting crackers while one person died of burns in Ramanathapuram.

According to data from the police headquarters, the number of fire calls and the number of persons injured in this year’s Deepavali across the state are less than the past two years.

About 8,000 personnel of the TNFRS (Tamil Nadu Fire and Rescue Services) were on duty on Thursday. In Chennai, 800 TNFRS personnel, attached to 43 fire stations in Chennai, were on duty.

As a precaution, 21 fire tenders from other districts were sent to Chennai. “We did 2,406 awareness campaigns on the safe handling of crackers across the state; 276 of them were held in Chennai,” a senior TNFRS officer said. This helped reduce the number of accidents involving rockets, a major cause of fires in Chennai last year.