Cerritos : Proposed Fireworks Ban to Be Put on 1990 Ballot

Voters in Cerritos will be asked next year if they want to ban the use, sale and possession of fireworks. The City Council voted this week to put the question on the 1990 general election ballot.

Like many cities in the area, Cerritos allows about a dozen, nonprofit community service organizations to raise money each Fourth of July by selling “safe and sane” fireworks. However, city officials are becoming more and more worried about the fire danger posed by the fund-raising practice because Cerritos has an abundance of aging wood roofs.

Twenty years ago, when housing tracts started mushrooming on its vast acres of dairy farmland, the city required developers to use wood shake roofs, said Mayor Diana Needham, who favors a fireworks ban. Two houses in the past three summers have gone up in flames because of fireworks on their roofs.