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Tuesday, February 9, 2010 |
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County shortens fireworks season
Published June 24, 2009
SEGUIN — Anyone who was going out today to buy their Fourth of July fireworks needn’t bother.
Guadalupe County Commissioners Tuesday voted unanimously to declare a local drought disaster, shorten the selling season to four days and prohibit all aerial fireworks — except those fired by licensed pyrotechnic technicians in municipal or similar public displays.
The disaster order signed by County Judge Mike Wiggins took effect just after midnight this morning, which is when the fireworks selling season would have started. It runs through noon Saturday, at which time Texas Gov. Rick Perry must agree to extend the restrictions through the Fourth for them to remain in effect. County officials say they hope the four-day selling season would allow vendors who were not permitted sales last Fourth of July or New Year’s to realize profits during the part of the season in which they realize most of their sales — the final days leading up to the holiday.
The county took the action in an emergency meeting requested by its top disaster planner, Emergency Management Coordinator Dan Kinsey.
“What I’m requesting is that we ban all aerial fireworks — Roman candles, missiles with fins and rockets on sticks,” Kinsey said. “When you fire them off, you don’t always know where they’re going to land. They can kind of smolder and cause a fire later, and people might not even know they started a fire. We feel like this, combined with a shortened selling season from July 1 to July 4, would help.”
Kinsey’s request came a week after four fireworks vendors who do business in Guadalupe County voluntarily pulled two types of aerial fireworks county governments often ban during drought, which are the “rockets on sticks” and “missiles with fins,” permitted under the Texas Local Government Code.
The law requires that a county contemplating such a ban give fireworks sellers advance notice so they don’t order products they can’t sell. But it also stipulates that in order to call a ban, the Keetch-Byram Drought Index, a scale that measures soil moisture to determine the risk of wild fire, be at 575 or higher on a scale of 800 by June 15.
This year, the KBDI fell short of that level on that date, but has been creeping upward ever since over a series of dry, breezy days with triple digit temperatures.
Tuesday’s KBDI was 583. Kinsey said by the Fourth, the county’s mean or average KBDI could be as high as the 670 area if conditions don’t improve. In some of the county’s northern reaches, Kinsey said, the KBDI had already reached 700 — suggesting severely dry conditions.
“I’ve talked to the National Weather Service,” Kinsey told commissioners. “They’re calling for temperatures of 100 degrees or higher through the Fourth with no significant rain in the forecast.”
Kinsey said other counties in the region were contemplating similar action. Bexar County, he said, would shorten the season and limit fireworks to a series of safe zones — a move it has employed in the past.
“We won’t be restricting fireworks to safe zones,” Kinsey said.
Wiggins told commissioners Comal County was contemplating action similar to the one taken here Tuesday. He also said he’d be asking Perry to back his play on the disaster declaration.
“The governor’s office has previously supported the counties in the interest of public safety, and I don’t see him not doing that now,” Wiggins said.
Precinct 4 Commissioner Judy Cope, whose district includes much of the rural county areas, noted the extremely dry conditions.
“We wish people would take personal responsibility,” Cope said. “People don’t always realize the extreme danger they put people in due to dry conditions. We just wish everybody would really remember that just because they’re out in a rural area doesn’t mean other people won’t be affected by their actions.”
Kinsey stressed as he has for more than a year now that the county is not anti-business or anti-fireworks.
“We’re pro-business in Guadalupe County, but even more so, we’re pro-public safety,” Kinsey said. “We feel this is a plan that balances both.”
Wiggins said major vendors had been informed the county was considering further action as a result of the hot dry weather.
Out at the fireworks store off State Highway 123 where County Line Volunteer Fire Department sells fireworks to pay for equipment it couldn’t otherwise afford, department members and volunteers were surprised and concerned.
Fire Chief Bill Gebhardt said the only prudent path for his department was to discontinue stocking shelves and wait for the county to clarify its disaster declaration and its ramifications. He said he’d been in touch with his supplier, Mr. W Fireworks, and been told the company was studying the situation.
“We went ahead and closed down because we can’t do anything until we know what we’re doing,” Gebhardt said. “We’ve quit until we see what happens, because everything we can’t sell has to be moved out of here.”
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