‘Safe and sane?’ Fireworks nearly cause major fires all the time | Opinion
Fireworks aren’t safe or sane
Thirty years ago, a small group of West Richland residents sold the city council on the idea of “Safe and Sane” fireworks. Since then, several fires have ignited near my home in Willamette Heights, where lots were originally platted as two and half acre parcels.
Fires have been started by, 1) youth-launched fireworks at a July 4 party, 2) kids who snuck off in the dark with firecrackers, 3) fireworks launched by enthusiastic adults that went horizontal instead of vertical, struck a fence, and dropped into the brush below, 4) glowing debris from aerial fireworks on multiple occasions, sometimes pushed downward by erratic winds.
In a two-by four grid of lots around me, six have been ignited by other people’s fireworks, some multiple times. One year it was my property. While firefighters fought the blaze, neighbors gathered on the corner.
The following day, one of them told me that he noticed a little girl there tugging on her mother’s arm, asking, “Are those ours? Did we do this?” Her mother shushed her and told her to be quiet. Safe and sane does not describe reality in West Richland on July 4. Unsafe and irresponsible is closer to the truth.
Jay W. Grate, West Richland
Thanks to restaurants
Once again, I want to thank Olive Garden and Dennys for the wonderful food they give us vets every Veterans Day.
Levi Garcia, West Richland
Trump’s boast to the contrary
President Donald Trump took a victory lap on the economy on the one-year anniversary of his successful election, boasting of cheaper prices and saying the U.S. is the envy of the globe even while the Republican Party faced a rebuke from voters anxious about their own finances in Tuesday’s off-year elections.
Millions of seniors and families are paying more for everything from medication and baby formula to furniture, electronics and food. More than three in four Americans now rate the U.S. economy as poor, and they blame Trump’s trade policies.
What analysts at the Harvard Business School Pricing Lab found is that the president’s tariffs not only boosted the price of imported goods, they made domestic products more expensive also. On average, products made in America arose half as much as imports, but all classes of goods got more expensive.
Trump’s claims to the contrary, foreign manufacturers aren’t eating tariff-related costs. “If you look at import price indices, produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, they are not falling. In fact, they’ve actually increased. So that suggests foreign exporters are not lowering their export prices.”
More people are realizing that Trump’s economic schemes are creating higher costs for them.
Bill Petrie, Richland