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New Year's Fireworks Again Spark Complaints

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By Carl  Orth | The Suncoast News

Published: January 5, 2008

NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - NEW PORT RICHEY, Fla. - Fireworks can burn as hot as 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit.

Perhaps the only thing that burns hotter are the tempers of people who put up with backyard pyrotechnic displays by neighbors.

The New Year's Eve celebrations ignited another round of complaints to county officials and the Sheriff's Office.

Local leaders in turn explain how they are powerless to defuse the situation. A state task force is supposed to submit a report by the end of January offering recommendations for possible statewide fireworks regulations.

"What will it take to stop amateurs from setting off fireworks for recreational purposes?" Caryl Melancon of Hudson asked in a letter after narrowly escaping injury on New Year's Eve. "Does someone have to be injured? Killed?"

She was walking her four dogs on Dec. 31, she commented Wednesday. "I usually try to take them out as early as possible before the fireworks start. This time I was too late.

"As we walked down one of the streets in my Beacon Wood East neighborhood, there was a very loud noise and lights lit up the sky. Then the debris from those lights started falling on me and the dogs.

"They were terrified and so was I. What if my hair caught on fire? What if one of the dog's coats caught on fire?"

She estimated spending at least $300 last year to try tranquilizing her animals.

"I spoke to some of the individuals setting off the big blasts advising them that what they were doing was illegal and dangerous. I'm sure you can guess the response."

Gary Schurman and Carol Maislis, of New Port Richey, share Melancon's frustration. Any holiday seems to be an excuse for inappropriate backyard displays of fireworks, not just the Fourth of July.

Melancon likewise had complained about fireworks on Christmas Eve and Christmas, which seems inappropriate to her.

Schurman and Maislis wrote to Commissioner Pat Mulieri about a 14-year-old across the street they saw light firecrackers and throw them onto the lawn of the elderly woman next door.

The couple's pets are traumatized by the loud booms. In addition, burning fireworks embers have landed on their roof and pool screens.

"When will this madness stop? Our government has seen fit to allow people to lie to obtain these explosive devices without any fear of penalty."

In response, Mulieri noted, the county drew up local rules on fireworks and sales of fireworks last June. The proposed rules included a ban on roadside sales of fireworks from tents, a requirement officials hoped would limit the number of vendors operating in the county.

State lawmakers, however, declared a moratorium on any local rules governing fireworks and set up the task force to create the statewide alternatives.

"The state legislature in its infinite wisdom decided not to let us to have local control," Commissioner Michael Cox bitterly complained Wednesday. "The fireworks industry can just run rampant."

Cox, who has an 11-month-old puppy, understands the anguish pet owners feel when loud explosions disturb their animals.

"Our hands are tied until the state Legislature comes up with a solution," Commissioner Jack Mariano added. Even if Pasco banned the sale of fireworks, people could go to nearby counties to buy them, he reasons.

"Sadly the fireworks industry in this state is extremely powerful," state Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said Wednesday.

"We shouldn't be selling fireworks to just anyone," Fasano said.

The current law allows fireworks to be sold only for limited purposes, such as scaring birds away from crops or staging public displays. Buyers must sign a form saying that's how they intend to use the pyrotechnics.

"People who sign these forms are breaking the law," Fasano said.

Years ago, fire chiefs and fire marshals from around the state helped write a proposal to curb fireworks abuses, Fasano recalled. Fireworks industry lobbyists thwarted the proposed legislation, though.

Celebrants "should be respectful of their neighbors," Fasano pleaded.

Fasano warily notes the presence of fireworks industry representatives on the state task force.

"Our hands are tied on the local level," said Doug Tobin, a spokesman for the Pasco Sheriff's Office.

Under current laws, a deputy must witness the neighborhood displays of fireworks and positively identify who set them off.

Prosecution is "darned near impossible," Tobin said. An accused person can claim to be scaring off birds with the pyrotechnics.

Tobin recalled how last summer a vendor's tent in West Pasco had caught fire from a fireworks explosion.

The Sheriff's Office devotes considerable space on its Web site – at Click – to the difficulty of enforcing fireworks laws.

People also can go online to the Consumer Fireworks Task Force Web site to see a summary of the task force's draft recommendations to the Legislature.

Some possible state fireworks rules

As of Dec. 28, among the proposed regulations the Florida Consumer Fireworks Task Force could recommend to the Legislature is a ban on persons under the age of 18 buying, selling or possessing aerial or audible-ground-device types of fireworks. There is no proposed age limit for "novelty" fireworks such as sparklers and party poppers.

The panel is also considering recommending that people be required to have a license and receive safety training before being able to use consumer-type aerial fireworks such as sky rockets, Roman candles and mortar shells.

Under the current proposals persons setting off aerial fireworks would have to have at least 25 contiguous acres of property and would have to keep fireworks at least 250 feet from property lines.

The draft proposal also requires counties to designate at least one site in "right place(s) and not close to residential areas" where firing off aerial fireworks by licensed individuals would be allowed.

In addition, the tentative regulations would only allow the use of consumer aerial and audible-ground fireworks from 5 p.m. on Dec. 31 until 1 a.m. on Jan. 1. There would be a second window of opportunity for legal firework use, noon to 11 p.m. on July 1 - 5.
Local governments could designate other holidays on which fireworks use would be legal.

The task force will meet this Wednesday, Jan. 9, in Apopka, to review the latest draft of the proposed fireworks regulations and discuss whether to forward the recommendations to lawmakers.

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