San Diego Officials Blast Use of Fireworks

Moe Jarvis knows firsthand just how dangerous fireworks can be.

Jarvis, an arson investigator for the state fire marshal’s office, suffered first- and second-degree burns on his face while he was helping dispose of confiscated illegal fireworks last September. The incident occurred when a trail of gunpowder used to ignite the pile of fireworks--not the fireworks themselves--flared unexpectedly.

“It’s the same type of powder that you find in the majority of your fireworks,” said Jarvis, who joined other fire and police officials Monday in warning against the dangers of pyrotechnics.

All types of fireworks are illegal throughout San Diego County, even the so-called “safe and sane” fireworks, such as sparklers, that are legal in other parts of California. At a news conference in the San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium parking lot, officials urged parents to crack down on the use of fireworks this July 4th weekend and announced the formation of a special task force to combat fireworks use.

The task force will consist of 10 to 20 police officers and firefighters whose main job will be looking for fireworks users at the beaches, where fireworks are common and are “easiest to spot,” said San Diego Police Officer John Trent. The fireworks will be confiscated and the users will be issued citations.

The maximum penalty for setting off fireworks is a $1,000 fine and six months in jail.

San Diego County has done relatively well in minimizing the number of injuries and fires caused by fireworks. According to statistics compiled by the California State Fire Marshal, fireworks caused 16 fires in San Diego County between mid June and mid July, 1986, compared with 86 such fires in Orange County.

Only three people in San Diego County were injured by fireworks during the same period last year, while 46 were injured in Orange County.

Several officials called “safe and sane” fireworks a misnomer. Those fireworks, legal in parts of Orange and Los Angeles counties, can be extremely dangerous, they said.

“Safe and sane” fireworks are brought into the San Diego area from other parts of California or other states, and there is little that San Diego area officials can do to stop it.

“It’s easy enough to get it across. There’s no checkpoints coming into California or San Diego County checking for fireworks,” Trent said.

Many of the fireworks that will be used in the San Diego area this weekend are smuggled in from Mexico. Customs officials confiscated about 400 pounds of fireworks at the Mexican border last weekend.

Jarvis said Mexican fireworks are especially unstable because of poor quality control. “They’re manufactured very unsafely down there and they don’t always go off the way they’re supposed to,” he said.

Nevertheless, many generally law-abiding people smuggle fireworks across the border, Jarvis said. “Your fireworks are smuggled by you and your sister and her boyfriend--just mothers and dads,” he said.

To demonstrate how dangerous fireworks can be, Gayle Bates of the San Diego Fire Department bomb disposal squad planted an M-80 in a watermelon and set a torch to the fuse. But the melon proved nearly indestructible, as the pop of the explosive barely put a dent in it. On a second try, another M-80 shook the watermelon and sent it rolling slowly down a hill for about 300 feet, but the melon remained intact.

“That’s how reliable fireworks are,” Bates said. “Sometimes they can blow your hand off and sometimes they just make a little pop like that.”

Instead of relying on a law enforcement crackdown to eliminate fireworks, Joy Price of the Burn Institute said she hopes a simple appeal to parents will do the job.

“The main message is not always to children, it’s to parents as role models,” she said. “Be a good role model: Follow the law, which means no fireworks.”

Price said San Diegans should enjoy the numerous legal pyrotechnic displays planned for the weekend rather than staging their own private shows.