Florida used to be the state that produced weird news, but recently it has been Arizona that has been capturing the headlines. Governor Jan Brewer recently signed into law dozens of bills, one of which allows the sale of certain kinds of fireworks, including ground and hand-held devices such as sparklers, spinning wheels, and smoke devices. The law bans fireworks intended to rise above the ground, such as bottle rockets or roman candles. It allows cities to ban the use of fireworks within their boundaries. Bobby Ruiz, an Assistant Chief for the Phoenix Fire Department said, “Now, we’re going to have more kids with matches and playing with fireworks that put out a lot of sparks and easily ignite dry vegetation.”
Another law signed by the governor bans the use of human embryos for creating “human-animal hybrids”. Whew. I’m glad she took care of that issue.
An article at ArrowLakesNews.com covers the effort to ban all fireworks in British Columbia:
The Fire Chiefs’ Association of British Columbia (FCABC) is trying to ban fireworks permanently throughout the province, and after much debate, the Nakusp council will not be sending a letter of support.
Bruce Mabin, zone four director of the FCABC, wrote that a bylaw should be drafted in each area around the Kootenays banning the sale and distribution entirely.
“It is our belief that the annual increased level for wildland fires each year in our areas makes the use of consumer fireworks a constant threat for instigation of a wildfire,” he wrote.
Nakusp fire chief Terry Warren said it’s just not worth it, because in his opinion the risk isn’t worth the reward.
“They’re just too dangerous,” he said. “The biggest issue is in the fire-ban season, when people from other provinces see these fireworks for sale and start setting them off. It’s a problem throughout the province.”
According to the FCABC, 8,000 children are injured and 20 people die each year in North America from improper fireworks use.
Roughly 120 amputations occur annually to the hands and fingers.
The annual 4th of July fireworks at Mount Rushmore, which in the past has started fires and littered the ground with tons of fireworks debris, is being cancelled this year. The Mount Rushmore National Memorial is surrounded by 1,200 acres of forested lands within the Memorial’s boundary, but it is adjacent to the Black Hills National Forest’s Black Elk Wilderness, in which most of the trees have been recently killed by pine beetles.
The National Park Service is saying the fireworks are being cancelled because of the risk of fire caused by the fireworks in the beetle-killed fuels. Navnit Singh, chief of interpretation and education at the memorial, said Wednesday:
The condition of the forest is such that, unlike any other year before, there is a greater risk of a wildfire growing into a catastrophic fire, because there’s more dead forest close to the park than any other previous year.
I was the Fire Management Officer for Mount Rushmore and six other parks during the first four years that fireworks were used on Independence Day at the Memorial. I developed a plan that would require that the weather and fuel conditions be within certain parameters before the fireworks could be used. We continued to refine the plan each year, settling on Probably of Ignition as one of the primary factors on the go/no-go checklist, especially after the fireworks started about 10 fires one year. All of the fires were small and were suppressed by the 60-80 firefighters we had positioned in the forest around the sculpture. One year the fireworks were cancelled because of the fire danger.
The Mount Rushmore Society conveniently has this photo on their web site, showing the Mount Rushmore fireworks with burning embers hitting the ground. Photo: South Dakota Tourism
In my humble opinion, igniting fireworks over and around Mount Rushmore is no way to treat the memorial, the sculpture, and the natural resources around the Memorial. The fireworks are disrespectful to the significance of the Memorial, they leave millions of pieces of debris that can never be picked up, they start fires, and tie up firefighting resources during a busy period of the fire season.
Last Sunday, November 15, the New England Patriots were playing the Colts at Indianapolis when after a touchdown, the staff of the new 60,000-seat Lucus Oil Stadium set off fireworks inside the facility. And, as frequently happens with fireworks everywhere, they started several small fires in the artificial turf on the field.
An alert Colts staffer put out one of the fires with Gatorade and his sneaker-clad foot.
This is just another example of why fireworks are unsafe, and INDOOR FIREWORKS are insane.
(Note: this is a re-post of an article we originally posted on November 15, but got lost during the recent transitions here at Wildfire Today.)
A college student has been ordered to pay restitution of $27,000 for tossing a firecracker in the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, starting a wildfire which burned 70 acres. The U. S. Forest Services said Jonathon Meyer was camping with friends in the Daniel Boone National Forest when he started the fire with fireworks, then fled without warning other campers or reporting the fire.
Eight others, after agreeing to plea bargins, will pay $6,700 each.
Yesterday we started a list of the fires that were caused by fireworks. Today we are adding to the list as more reports are available.
13. Padre Island, Texas: People with fireworks caused several fires on unoccupied islands in the Laguna Madre. No homes were threatened and the fire department had no boats, so the fires are being allowed to burn until they run out of fuel, which should happen sometime on Sunday.
14. Burbank, Wash.: A fire that may have been started by fireworks burned onto the grounds of a biodiesel plan early Saturday. About 30,000 gallons of vegetable oil spilled during the 3-alarm fire.
15. Canal Winchester, Ohio:Fireworks were the cause of a fire in the 5900 block of Waterloo Road that totally destroyed a barn, according to a report from the Fairfield County Sheriff’s Office.Victims said they lit the fireworks and put the remnants in a truck, which they parked in the barn. Between 11:30 p.m. Friday and midnight Saturday, the trash caught fire, consuming the vehicle and then the structure.
The report indicated the barn and items inside appeared to be a total loss.The fire caused an estimated $150,000 in damages.
16. Richland, Wash.: Fireworks are suspected as the cause of a 20-acre fire.
17. Greenwood, Miss.: Investigators believe fireworks were the cause of a fire that destroyed Perry’s Pawn Shot and a vacant building.
18. Tehachapi, Calif.: The City of Tehachapi’s annual 4th of July fireworks display ignited a small grass fire that lit up local airport runways and briefly delayed traffic at the intersection of Tehachapi Boulevard and Dennison Road.
Carin Enovijas photo
Within an hour, the grass fire was contained by local firefighters, with back up units responding from as far away as Mojave, Tehachapi’s Chief of Police Jeff Kermode said. The Tehachapi Police Explorers assisted with traffic control at the scene.
According to Kern County Fire Department’s Public Information Officer Sean Collins, county firefighters responded to 245 incidents within two hours of sundown.
19 & 20. Yakima, Wash.: Two homes were badly damaged by separate fires caused by fireworks.
21. Covington, Wash.: From Seattlepi.com:Four homes in Covington were damaged by fire Saturday evening when fireworks ignited juniper bushes near one of the homes, the city of Kent reported.
The incident occurred in the 25400 block of 163rd Avenue Southeast when flames leaped from the bushes to ignite the siding of a two-story house. The fire quickly spread to the attic and then into the home.
Firefighters arrived to fight the fire, but sparks spread to three nearby residences, igniting their shake roofs. The fires at two of those houses were put out quickly with only minimal damage to the roofs, but the third house was on an adjacent street and had time to spread before firefighters were notified of the problem.
Firefighters from Kent Fire Department and Maple Valley Fire and Life Safety responded. The warm weather forced firefighters to be rotated out of duty frequently to stay hydrated.
Covington police cited an individual for discharging the fireworks in a dangerous manner, although the fireworks which started the fire were “of the legal type,” according to a spokesman.
22, 23, & 24. Snohomish County, Wash: Three structures burned in separate incidents, all caused by fireworks.
25. Tampa, Florida: Fireworks launched from across the street set a house on fire Sunday afternoon causing about $50,000 in damage.
26. Honolulu, Hawaii: We’ll count this as one fire, but the Honolulu Fire Department responded to 45 fires over the last two days that appear to be fireworks related, a spokesman said in an e-mail this morning.From midnight Thursday to midnight last night, firefighters responded to 26 brush fires, said fire Capt. Terry Seelig. Of those, 19 appear to have been started by fireworks. There were also 28 fires in trash bins or involving rubbish. Fireworks may have started 23 of those fires.
27. Sacramento, Calif.: Investigators believe illegal fireworks may have caused a two-alarm fire that tore through the back of an Oak Park home Saturday night, a Sacramento Fire spokesman said.
Sacramento fire crews arrived to find heavy smoke and flames pouring out of the back of a home on the 3400 block of 12th Avenue around 10:18 p.m. Saturday, Sacramento Fire Capt. Jim Doucette said.
The blaze quickly went to two alarms as approximately 50 firefighters worked to keep the flames from spreading to the house next door. Crews were able to contain the blaze to the single home, which sustained extensive damage before firefighters could fully douse the flames.
