Illegal firework usage on Fourth of July was much lower than last year in Gilroy and Santa Clara County, fire officials said Tuesday, but there was still a concerning number of illegal fireworks set off throughout the county.
In Gilroy, the only city in Santa Clara County where specific fireworks during the Fourth of July weekend are legal, Fire Chief Jim Wyatt said firework activity must be down because the number of fires started went down by more than 50 percent.
In 2020, Gilroy had nine firework-related fires on Independence Day.
This year, Gilroy only had four, all of which were vegetation fires and manageable, Wyatt said.
The fire chief said all the fires that sparked both in 2021 and 2020 were because of illegal fireworks. In Gilroy, safe and sane fireworks, which do not shoot up in the air and have a smaller amount of gunpowder, are the only legal types of fireworks and they are only legal during that weekend.
Those fireworks have been legal in the city for at least 25 years, he said, but the city saw an uptick in fireworks usage in the last five years.
Their rise in popularity, compounded with the end of many pandemic-related restrictions, made many local fire departments worried for the Fourth of July weekend.
“We were preparing for the worst,” Wyatt said. “It just seemed like it was a perfect storm we were going into with the Fourth of July being over the weekend, and it just wasn’t so.”
He speculated that the reason residents reduced the use of illegal fireworks was because of the scary fire season Gilroy residents endured last year with both the Crews Fire and the SCU Lightning Complex.
“Those were the two biggest fires we’ve ever seen,” Wyatt said. “And I think the public knows pretty well now that we’re in a severe drought, which makes conditions even worse.”
The Cal Fire Santa Clara Unit, which spans over five counties including Santa Clara County, only responded to two fires.
“We still had a few fires, but nothing of any real significance,” said Dwight Good, Assistant Chief for Cooperative Fire Protection at Cal Fire SCU. “And it was a manageable workload, which was an improvement over last year.”
He said this year, there were only about 75 acres burned across the unit on the Fourth of July—the biggest fire in Contra Costa County.
Last year, Cal Fire responded to four fires on July 4 and those were much larger.
Good said he thinks the number of illegal fireworks went down because “citizens were more vigilant in the use of fireworks due to the high fire danger throughout the state.”
Still, many thought the illegal fireworks were out of control.
In San Jose, the fireworks polluted the air enough to change the air quality from good to moderate, according to IQAir.
Assemblymember Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, also took to Twitter to express his outrage at the number of fireworks erupting throughout the city.
“The fireworks are completely out of control,” Kalra tweeted. “There’s no sympathy for veterans or others with acute sensitivity to sounds of explosions. And, the pets and wildlife. This is sheer torture for the animals. I’ve never heard it this bad before and that says a lot being in San Jose.”
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