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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Archives Revels Classifieds Real Estate Menu Guide Wedding Weather Subscribe Contact Us June 29, 2005 Safety first with fireworks City hopes people stay safe through holiday as residents stock up on their seasonal noisemakers By Jennifer Squires Ashland Daily Tidings Tidings printed front page here Anelia Kaloferova buys fireworks at Discount Fireworks on Highway 99 north of Ashland on Tuesday. Legal fireworks can be set off within city limits through July 6. Olga Thomas | For the Tidings The fiery fun is already halfway over. Ashland residents have one more week to ignite legal fireworks in the city this summer. The use of legal fireworks is allowed in the city only from June 23 to July 6. The city council established the two-week window in 2002 to reduce the fire danger from fireworks after a blaze caused by children playing with leftover fireworks destroyed an Ashland home in 2001. “We certainly get our share of fires here and there,” said Ashland Fire and Rescue fire prevention officer Margueritte Hickman. “We haven’t had any other homes burn, but we’ve had landscaping and fields burn.” At the Discount Fireworks Superstore on Highway 99 north of Ashland, small posters on the tent walls remind people to use fireworks safely. “We tell them to do it on a flat, concrete area, not in a grassy area,” said tent manager Gary Wood, of Roseburg. “Usually you have some sort of water, like a bucket or hose, if you’re doing a lot of fireworks.” The store sells everything from colorful sparklers to the popular Havana Heat, a 3 1/2-minute show that begins with red and gold showers, adds silver streams and then gold crackling eggs before red and green stars and a shower of silver with purple, copper and blue rains down. The largest fireworks available at the store shoot 12 feet in the air, the maximum height for private fireworks allowed by state law. The sale of fireworks is also illegal in the Ashland city limits, which is why the Discount Fireworks Superstore tent is staked near exit 19. The next-closest fireworks sale is at the Talent Wal-Mart, and both stores attract a lot of customers from California, where fireworks are not sold. Emma Meenaghan , 6, and her brother riley, 4, watch smoke bombs lit in early July 2003 on Oak Knoll Drive. “We get a lot of people coming in here, asking for bottle rockets and M-80s,” Wood said. “We can’t sell any of that stuff; it’s all illegal in Oregon.” Instead, Wood directs customers to new fireworks, such as Hearts of Fire and Sun Tears, the popular Ohh So Good and Seventh Heaven, a “big finale” show. “Most of it will be gone,” said Wood, adding the $40,000 profit the tent will make funds the Pentecostal Church of God youth camp. The church runs nine tents in Southern Oregon during June and July. Safety first Extra crews from the Ashland police and fire departments will be patrolling the city on the Fourth of July to make sure banned fireworks are not being lit up and that people are using fireworks in a safe, responsible manner. “We’re very aware and kind of waiting for the fireworks during this period,” Hickman said, explaining firefighters can confiscate illegal fireworks and any fireworks being used after July 6. “I would say, 99 percent of the time, the fires that we go on are from people being unsafe.” Fireworks are not allowed in city parks or the watershed. They will also be banned from state and private forestlands, as well as the Bureau of Land Management lands in Jackson and Josephine Counties, beginning Friday. The Oregon Department of Forestry declared fire season on these lands June 27. The Ashland Fire Department would prefer people forego lighting private fireworks displays on their driveways and in streets, and watch the public display over the Southern Oregon University football practice field on the evening of July 4 instead. “We’d love to have people enjoy the public display,” Hickman said. “I think it’s a tradition that folks aren’t real ready to give up. By paying attention to the safety concerns I think people can operate in a manner that is responsible.” For more information contact Ashland Fire & Rescue at 482-2770. Staff writer Jennifer Squires can be reached at 482-3456 x 3019 or [email protected]. 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