All fireworks have the potential to injure people or property.
Make sure you follow all safety precautions
– chief among them, only light fireworks when you’re sober.
Heads up, fireworks lovers: Gilroy has sharply increased fines for illegal fireworks.
Anyone caught with illegal fireworks – those that explode or shoot into the air, like bottle rockets, roman candles and M-80s – can be arrested and fined $750.
But this isn’t just a warning for those who possess fireworks, it’s also a warning for property owners. An administrative citation can be imposed on property owners. This aids enforcement because often, when police find a group of people with fireworks, no one claims ownership.
“So we end up confiscating them instead,” Police Sgt. Kurt Svardal told report Serdar Tumgoren. “Under the administrative citations, it starts to become the property owner’s responsibility and that’s a good way of handling it.”
We welcome the increased fines and hope that more citations are issued this year to those who use illegal fireworks. Last year, police confiscated more than 7,300 illegal fireworks and received more than 200 calls for service, yet issued only two fireworks citations.
Gilroy is the only city in tinder-dry Santa Clara County that allows fireworks of any kind – the so-called safe-and-sane variety sold by nonprofit groups at booths all over town. But those illegal fireworks threaten the sales of safe-and-sane fireworks upon which so many charitable groups depend.
Illegal fireworks threaten public safety, and the safe-and-sane fireworks are an important source of income for lots of Gilroy charities. We hope that the very real threat of increased fines greatly reduces the number of illegal fireworks set off in Gilroy.
But safety needs to come first, even with the safe-and-sane variety of fireworks. All fireworks have the potential to injure people or property. Make sure you follow all safety precautions – chief among them, only light fireworks when you’re sober.
Just as drinking and driving can be a lethal combination, so too can imbibing and igniting.
Let’s all have a safe and sane Fourth of July.
