Private fireworks still OK this year in Brookings area

Hanna Taylor, left, helps Suzette Burckhard, center, and her children, Liberty and Jakob Burckhard, pick out fireworks for their evening celebration at Taylor’s Fireworks on Main Avenue south of Brookings. The business has been family-run since it opened in the 1950s; eight members of the Taylor family are working there this year. Photo by Charis Prunty/Register

• No new restrictions due to dryness, but fire department urges caution

BROOKINGS – Though areas throughout the country are banning private fireworks displays this year because of drought conditions, the shows can go on in Brookings County.

Deputy Fire Chief Pete Bolzer said Monday that the Brookings area has no extra restrictions on fireworks this year, but he is asking celebrants to be extra careful. The area did have a dry winter, and though it has been blessed with rain this spring and summer, the sun has been hot lately.

“I would urge caution, to use a little common sense when you discharge them, because we are starting to dry out fast,” Bolzer said.

“This heat is really taking its toll on the moisture in the growing plants, and then there’s all that dead stuff underneath that people can’t see.”

The city’s fireworks ordinance is of course in place, Bolzer added, which states that fireworks cannot be discharged within Brookings city limits.

According to the policy, “fireworks” include blank cartridges, toy pistols, toy cannons, toy canes or toy guns in which explosives are used, the type of balloons which require fire underneath to propel them, firecrackers, torpedoes, skyrockets, bottle rockets, Roman candles, dago bombs, sparklers or similar devices, and any devices containing an explosive or flammable compound, or any tablets or other devices containing any explosive substances.

Anything combustible or explosive, or anything prepared for the purpose of producing a visible or an audible effect by combustion, explosion, deflagration or detonation, is a firework and not allowed in Brookings.

The only exceptions to the rule are small, essentially harmless devices.

“Very little, like the pops and the glow worms and things like that – that’s the only thing that is actually allowed within the city limits,” Bolzer said.

Find the fireworks code on the city’s website, www.cityofbrookings.org, under the “Municipal Code” tab.

According to the Associated Press, fires have charred more than 1.8 million acres this year in the U.S., and much of Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and Montana have been under red-flag warnings for extreme fire danger.

That’s why private – and some public – fireworks shows have been given a red light this year:

The AP notes that fireworks were blamed for more than 15,500 blazes and $36 million in property damage in 2010, according to the National Fire Protection Association in Quincy, Mass.



Contact Charis Prunty at cprunty@brookingsregister.com.