The Samish Neighborhood Association (SNA) sent a letter to the Bellingham Police Department and the city council in early January calling for increased enforcement of the current fireworks laws inside the city.
According to the city ordinance, fireworks are prohibited in Bellingham except on July 4 and Jan. 1. This is more restrictive than the state law that says they can be shot off between June 28 and July 5.
“But fireworks start weeks before the fourth and end weeks after,” said Clay Butler, a Bellingham resident.
Butler is heading a movement in the city to ban fireworks in Bellingham. He has presented his ideas to all the neighborhood associations, asking for their support of the ban.
The Samish Neighborhood Association felt they couldn’t support the ban, but decided to send a letter encouraging the police department to pay more attention to this issue, said Greg McCracken, President of the SNA.
“The majority of the board felt that fireworks were not a problem in the neighborhood,” McCracken said.
Butler has also started an online blog and petition to allow conversation and comments from community members. He said there are about 350 people in the city who are willing to comment and support him on this issue.
The ban would make shooting off fireworks during unauthorized times into a criminal offense.
“When someone reports fireworks, by the time police determine whether or not it’s a violation, the people who are setting off fireworks have already gone back in their house,” Butler said.
He said it affects people who have come back from war with PTSD more than others because the noise is so loud that it scares them.
Being so close to the Lummi Indian Reservation is a big contributor to these fireworks, Butler said. “People go out and buy them on the reservation and then bring them back into town where they are illegal,” he said.
Fireworks are also huge fire hazards, Butler said. In the late 1990’s, a woman died in a house fire in Bellingham caused by people mishandling fireworks, he said. A group of college students were drinking in two separate houses and shooting fireworks at each other. The house caught on fire and a woman died in the upstairs bedroom.
It was a senseless death,” said City Councilman Stan Snapp, a supporter of the ban and a former Bellingham firefighter.
After this death, the idea of a ban was presented to the city council and they restricted the use of fireworks to just two days out of the year rather than the 10 days that the state law allows, Snapp said.
“On [the council’s] lines, they feel like they’ve already fixed it,” Snapp said.
50 other cities in the state have already banned all fireworks in the city, Butler said. He said that Spokane is one of the best success stories on this issue. They banned fireworks over 18 years ago and have decreased the number of firework related injuries and damages by quite a lot, he said.
The Bellingham police are having a difficult time enforcing the restrictions they have now, said Deputy Chief David Doll for the Bellingham Police Department.
“If someone is being blatantly unsafe, the officer will confiscate the fireworks and write a ticket,” Doll said. “But typically it’s a warning. But we do increase our enforcement during the summer.”
Doll said that there were 19 primary calls in 2010 that involved fireworks violations, with 14 of these calls in June and July.
“It is going to take a big push from the fire department or a neighborhood group to get the ball rolling,” Snapp said.
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