Stanton Should Keep Fireworks Ban : Outlawing Sales Has Helped Reduce Needless Injuries and Property Damage
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The trend for the last several years in Orange County has seen cities realize the wisdom and safety of banning the sale and use of all fireworks, including the so-called “safe and sane” legal variety. Of the county’s 31 cities, only four still allow their use.
It would be foolish for any community to reverse that trend and open itself up to the preventable injuries and property damage that go along with the sale of fireworks. But that is what some people are agitating for in Stanton, where city residents nearly five years ago voted to ban them.
The effort to reverse the ban was launched last July by two fireworks manufacturers. They have been using the same old tired, and disproved arguments: That it is the illegal fireworks, not the state-approved kind, that are the problem; and that fireworks sales are needed to help community groups raise money. They are wrong on both counts.
As firefighting officials, and a county grand jury report several years ago, consistently document, where legal fireworks are outlawed, damage and injuries from all fireworks are significantly reduced. That was the case again last year when the four cities that still allow fireworks sales reported 47% more fireworks-related fires than all the other cities in the county combined.
The fund-raising argument is a dud, too. Some organizations see the illogical contradiction of working to help youth while putting dangerous matches and fireworks in their hands. There are other--safer and saner--ways to raise funds. Besides, the sales are not really that significant a fund-raising factor and in some communities fire damage attributed to fireworks was greater some years than profits attributed to their sale. And that doesn’t include the pain and suffering caused by fireworks-related injuries.
Banning fireworks in all cities, except for public fireworks shows under the direction of licensed experts, makes holiday celebrations safer. It also would make it easier to enforce the bans that have been enacted in most parts of the county.
Stanton should keep its fireworks ban. And Santa Ana, Garden Grove, Costa Mesa and Buena Park, the four cities in the county that still allow fireworks, should join their sister cities in outlawing them to make the ban countywide. Doing so has nothing to do with patriotism or support of community organizations, but everything to do with reducing needless injuries and fire losses that their residents suffer in such disproportionate numbers.
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