Business Is Booming for Those Selling Fireworks : Fourth of July: Despite outside pressure, Palmdale remains the only city in northern L.A. County to permit the sale of the pyrotechnics.

With only hours remaining before dusk on the Fourth of July, business was brisk at roadside fireworks stands in Palmdale, the only remaining place to legally buy the pyrotechnics in the Antelope and San Fernando valleys.

“This year, it’s been crazy,” Mary Croxen said as she took a break from the line of customers at the Palmdale Emblem Club’s stand at Palmdale Boulevard and East 6th Street. “People have been buying this year wildly.”

Several other Palmdale fireworks merchants, all members of various nonprofit organizations that have operated the stands for the past week to earn money for their groups, reported similarly encouraging sales. But while earnings appeared to be rising this year, so too, apparently, has political opposition to the trade.

“This is something that’s been going on in the United States for 215 years,” Croxen said. “It’s been a tradition for generations. There’s too many more important things to spend people’s time on” than banning fireworks.

The city of San Fernando banned the sale of so-called “safe and sane” fireworks in 1988, leaving Palmdale as the lone exception in the area. A number of cities in Los Angeles County, including the city of Los Angeles, prohibit the sale and use of fireworks. They are also prohibited in unincorporated county areas.

Now, nearby communities are pressuring Palmdale to ban the sales as well.

Charles Brink, a member of the Town Council in Acton, an unincorporated area 20 miles south of Palmdale, is one of the leaders of an effort to persuade Palmdale city officials to halt the sale of fireworks.

The area’s four-year drought has made the use of fireworks by untrained handlers particularly dangerous, he said. Continued sales in Palmdale allow residents of nearby communities that have outlawed fireworks to obtain them, he said.

“We just want them to do whatever they want to do on their side of the hill, but just don’t cause us problems on this side of the hill,” Brink said.

Acton officials first asked the Palmdale City Council to ban the sales last year, Brink said. A week ago, they again raised the issue at a Palmdale council meeting, threatening the city’s officials with a lawsuit unless they banned fireworks.

“All the people who are selling them are very nice charitable organizations,” Brink said. “But there’s got to be another way they can make $10,000 or $20,000 that doesn’t put us at risk of a fire.”

Several Palmdale residents selling fireworks Wednesday disagreed. They said the stands, which by city law may be open only during the week before the Fourth of July, are far more profitable than other fund-raising activities.

“It’d kill us,” Jim Hull, Palmdale Knights of Columbus recorder, said of a possible ban on fireworks.

His group has sold fireworks for more than 30 years on Sierra Highway. “We get 90% of our annual sales from this.”

Those staffing the roadside stands also rejected Brink’s contention that they should ask their customers where they live and sell only to Palmdale residents.

“We do not ask,” Croxen said. “That is not our job. We will not police.”

Fireworks merchants say there is no reason to ban sales because, if used as intended, the devices are not dangerous. They noted that their products are non-flying devices such as sparklers and smoke bombs.

They also argue that banning fireworks in Palmdale would simply encourage those intent on using fireworks to make their own, buy more powerful ones from Mexico or travel to areas that still permit them.

San Fernando Police Officer Tom Favazzo said fireworks have abounded in his city despite the 1988 sales ban. He said a Palmdale prohibition “is not going to have any effect whatsoever.”

“They’re either going to get them here, or they’re going to get them somewhere else,” said Bill Leveck, who drove to Palmdale from Lancaster to buy sparklers, which he said he would use in Lancaster.

Dan, a weekend resident of Palmdale who declined to give his last name, was at the Emblem Club stand buying a $42.70 package of assorted fireworks.

He said the warnings on the packages are meaningless.

“You’ve got to take these apart and make real fireworks,” Dan said as he told how to combine the explosives from several fireworks into a more powerful device. “It’ll make you half a stick of dynamite. That’s safe and sane for you.”