Should Tacoma end fireworks ban? One Washington city offers cautionary lesson

By now, the smoke has cleared from your nose and eyes, a ceasefire has quieted the neighborhood and the dog has crawled out from under his anti-anxiety blanket. It’s full steam ahead for a milder brand of summer fun from now until Labor Day.

But not everyone can move past the Fourth of July mayhem so easily.

For some, mishandling fireworks leaves disfiguring injuries. Runaway pets can be heartbreaking, runaway flames devastating. On July 3, Edward and Nicholas Loftin of Tacoma lost countless possessions, handyman tools and the rental house where the father and son lived more than a decade, courtesy of a blaze that authorities suspect was caused by fireworks.

The city this year reported a total of 30 fireworks-related fires from June 26 to July 6 — the most since 2015 — with damage totaling nearly $120,000.

The annual kaboomfest also doesn’t dissipate quickly for public officials, whose ears ring from the inevitable raft of noise complaints.

Some local governments are reluctant to infringe on people’s pyrotechnic liberty. Others are content to tweak their fireworks codes, changing the calendar without addressing the underlying risks of letting amateurs blow stuff up. In unincorporated Pierce County, the legal period to buy fireworks was shortened by one day this year, while the legal ignition period was curtailed by three days.

Other communities are bolder. University Place put a fireworks ban on last November’s ballot, and more than 61 percent of voters said yes. When it goes into effect next year, UP will be the second-largest city in Pierce County, after Tacoma, to outlaw do-it-yourself fireworks. (Fircrest, Ruston and Steilacoom also don’t allow them.)

Down in Thurston County, Tumwater banned fireworks use on and around the holiday this year, aligning its rules with neighboring Olympia and Lacey. The cities were smart to spread the word through a coordinated campaign of curbside signs, mailers and social media reminders.

We’d like to see more cities work together. The patchwork of fireworks rules around the South Sound is a challenge, both for residents to remember and authorities to enforce.

What we hope not to see around here is a backwards move enacted by one city on the other side of the state.

After 22 years prohibiting all personal fireworks use, Pasco officials did a U-turn this year and started letting people light off the “safe and sane” variety, although they kept the ban on aerial displays.

Unfortunately, if you give fireworks fanatics an inch of freedom, they’ll take a mile. Pasco’s fire chief said the region was a “war zone” all day and night July 4, with double the usual fire calls for the holiday, a 37 increase in police calls and a 30 percent jump in animal control calls, according to our sister newspaper, The Tri-City Herald.

Let this be a lesson to Tacoma or any other local community that might be tempted to throw in the towel or try reverse psychology.

Cities will never be able to stop the onslaught entirely. There always will be misguided patriots who feel entitled to send bombs bursting in air, lest America forget the historic British assault on Fort McHenry.

But the best hope to minimize personal arsenals is to have a clear, consistent set of rules across the region, strong public messaging and more cops on patrol.

Tacoma took proactive steps this year, such as sharing the illegal fireworks message in six languages and circulating it at libraries, parks and farmers markets. An electronic communication was also sent to more than 14,000 Tacoma Public School students.

But here’s a crazy idea for next year: Why don’t local policy makers set a goal of handing out as many citations as warnings, while enforcing a zero-tolerance policy on repeat offenders?

Now that would make an explosive impact.

This story was originally published July 24, 2018 at 12:35 PM.