PD Editorial: For safety's sake, it's time to end fireworks sales in Sonoma County

In this Independence Day week, many North Coast residents are understandably worried about fireworks and the possibility of another catastrophe.

“It's a helluva thing to physically and emotionally lose everything, and all you did was go to bed,” Jeff Myers of Larkfield told Staff Writer Susan Minichiello last week.

Myers, a retired firefighter, lost his enthusiasm for personal fireworks on the Fourth of July after losing his home in the Tubbs fire last October.

Despite the firestorm, which destroyed 5,300 homes in Sonoma County alone, spinners, sparklers and other personal fireworks can be purchased this week in four of nine local cities.

We hope this is the last year for those sales.

Yes, fireworks are popular, and they are a Fourth of July mainstay dating back to the Second Continental Congress and the Declaration of Independence.

Fireworks also are a lucrative fundraiser for the community groups with permits to sell them, and the proceeds underwrite an array of good works.

But the risks are real, and they've only grown larger in the nine years since we first joined the call for an end to personal fireworks sales.

Fire season is starting earlier and, firefighters tell us, fires are burning hotter and spreading faster.

Their in-the-field observations are consistent with warnings from climate scientists about rising temperatures and erratic weather patterns. After last year's fires, Gov. Jerry Brown dubbed it the “new normal.”

A recent snapshot by Cal Fire and the U.S. Forest Service counted 2,100 fires, burning 16,800 acres, through June 10 of this year. By comparison, Cal Fire reported 1,662 fires during the same period in 2017, which eventually became the most destructive fire season in recent state history, with 9,133 fires burning more than 1.2 million acres - more than double the total for 2016.

Those figures don't include the Pawnee fire, which is still burning in eastern Lake County, or the County fire, which is spreading across Yolo and Napa counties and darkening local skies with wind-blown smoke.

“With the hot weather we've had recently, the dry vegetation out there is especially susceptible to sparks of any kind, including from fireworks,” Sonoma County Fire Marshal James Williams said Monday.

The last local city to outlaw fireworks was Santa Rosa. That followed a 2003 fire, started by teenagers using fireworks purchased legally, that destroyed a home in a neighborhood where the use of fireworks had been banned by the city a year earlier - because of the high fire danger.

Afterward, the City Council finally ended fireworks sales entirely - and Santa Rosa voters overwhelmingly affirmed the decision in a referendum the following year.

The ban was a hardship for community groups that sold fireworks, but they found alternative ways to raise money for their philanthropic efforts.

Cloverdale and Rohnert Park have since shortened their fireworks seasons, but these half-steps don't eliminate the threat posed by fireworks, even the state-approved “safe and sane” fireworks that don't explode or fly into the air.

Fireworks can - and should - continue to be an integral part of Fourth of July celebrations.

Professional fireworks shows are scheduled in most local communities, including tonight in Windsor and Sebastopol and Wednesday night in Santa Rosa, Calistoga, Cloverdale, Healdsburg, Petaluma, Rohnert Park and Sebastopol.

Let's support those shows, and let's protect our homes and wildlands by urging the city councils in Cloverdale, Petaluma, Rohnert Park and Sebastopol to join the rest of Sonoma County in snuffing out the sale and use of personal fireworks.

You can send a letter to the editor at letters@pressdemocrat.com