Pasco’s fireworks experiment didn’t go as planned. Here’s what’s next
Pasco will not reinstate its fireworks ban before the Fourth of July rolls around next year.
But the city council is looking to curb illegal fireworks after its move to allow some safe-and-sane choices didn’t work out the way it hoped this year.
The city altered its fireworks rules to allow residents to use about a half-dozen varieties of safe-and-sane fireworks that don’t go airborne.
It wanted to focus law enforcement efforts on the flying explosives that can and do start fires and cause injuries.
Instead, the city saw a striking increase in both.
The experiment may have failed its first test, but Pasco isn’t giving up on a happy marriage between public safety and fireworks-friendly rules.
Besides, state law won’t let it reinstate the ban until after July 5, 2019.
That gives the city a year to consider what steps it may need to curb aerial fireworks while allowing safe-and-sane ones.
The city council reviewed the results of this year’s festivities in a recent workshop session. It took no action.
Calls to police jumped almost 37 percent during prime fireworks hours on the Fourth of July.
Fire calls doubled.
And Tri-Cities Animal Control fielded 121 calls, a 30 percent increase over last year.
“It was a pretty significant night,” said Pasco Fire Chief Bob Gear.
Gear said crews responded to 42 calls, several involving buildings. The patriotic mayhem continued well past 11 p.m., when fire calls normally taper off.
“This year, we were still going hard at 2 or 2:30 a.m.,” Gear said.
For 2018, the city tried educational outreach, explaining the new rules to residents via:
- more than 20,000 flyers sent to utility customers,
- Facebook postings,
- paid advertising,
- and media coverage by the Tri-City Herald and other news outlets.
The educational approach continued on the Fourth. Officers gave warnings to people they saw using illegal fireworks, so long as stopped using them, Police Chief Bob Metzger said.
Eight who resisted were cited.
City officials are mulling assigning more officers to the “fireworks beat” in 2019 with the intent of doling out more citations to deter law-breakers.
Metzger said it’s hard to parse the effect of dropping the ban on some fireworks. There seemed to be more fireworks everywhere this year, he said.
“Quite frankly, the entire Tri-Cities was a war zone,” the chief said.
Sales numbers for 2018 are not yet available, but the American Pyrotechnics Institute reports fireworks are a $1.2 billion industry in the U.S. Consumers spent $885 million on personal fireworks and $353 million on display-quality fireworks in 2017.
Fireworks sales have climbed for 19 of the past 20 years.
Pasco police fielded 93 calls about fireworks on July 4, including 15 about aerial or illegal fireworks.
Kennewick, which bans all fireworks, fielded 86 calls, including 30 for aerials.
Richland, which allows residents to set off more kinds of the safe-and-sane fireworks than Pasco, fielded 64 calls, including 34 for the aerial styles.
West Richland led the area for fire calls on a per-capita basis, with 0.69 per 1,000 residents, followed by Richland with 0.43, Pasco with 0.26 and Kennewick at 0.10, according to information compiled by Pasco.
When it comes to animals, Tri-Cities Animal Control executive director Angela Zilar said fireworks are partly responsible for this year’s increase.
But she said that having the Fourth fall on a Wednesday likely contributed too.
The shelter is open Tuesdays and Thursdays, meaning people were able to bring lost animals in immediately instead of holding them for a few days and reuniting them with their owners without the agency’s help.
Most of the spooked animals that ended up at the shelter were swiftly reunited with their families, she said.
But animal control officers also found 16 dead animals, up two from the year prior.
There were nine injured animals, down from 14 in 2017. Animal control officers captured 24 animals out of 96 they tried to catch.
This story was originally published July 17, 2018 at 6:31 PM.