Getting Close!

Pending one more review of our petition, it's likely to be "on the street" early next month. We need a minimum of 5000 signatures of registered voters who live within Bellingham's city limits - to be safe, our goal is 7500! We need many more folks to gather signatures - if you would like to help, please post us at cfw_in_bellingham@juno.com or freedomfromfireworksbham@gmail.com. Hope that you and yours have a wonderful Holidays.

An Initiative to Ban Consumer Fireworks in Bellingham

A hard-copy petition to get an initiative to ban fireworks in our City should be ready next month. This initiative, if passed in the November, 2012 general election, will require changes to three (3) different Chapters of the Bellingham Municipal Code (BMC) and result in a City-wide ban of the sales, possession and use of consumer fireworks starting in late 2013.

2011 4th of July Update

The City's published press release promising to better enforce existing fireworks regulations was interesting. So much for better enforcement, right? It's time to renew our "ban consumer fireworks in our City" efforts.

So, let's review: this year we have a guy in Bellingham who blew himself up building his own "super" fireworks, a fellow in Ferndale who will lose his hand due to mishandling fireworks, a fire on the train trestle across the Bellingham Mudflats and a guy setting off fireworks in the street in Sunnyside who was hit by a car and died. Fortunately, only one of these incidents has been in the city limits.

But what has - and continues to - happen is a blatant flaunting of the law. According to recently released 911 information provided by Lieutenant Robert Vander Yacht, Patrol Commander of the Bellingham Police Department, who wrote,

"The demand on police and dispatchers related to 4th of July activities has steadily increased from 2009 to 2011. In 2009, with limited available data, it would appear that 4.3% of our call load stemmed from fireworks. In 2010 this rate climbed to 8.7%. In 2011 17% of our activity involved fireworks." That's roughly a yearly doubling of 911 calls related to fireworks each year since 2009.

Despite the extensive - and applaudable - efforts of the Bellingham Police and Fire Departments, the insanity continues. Bellingham's consumer fireworks regulations are, simply stated, unenforceable. Although many still believe that a total ban like more than 50-other cities in Washington is long overdue in Bellingham, perhaps other approaches to this situation exist. So, if any of you who have endorsed the on-line petition have some other ideas, please advise, OK?

It's Begun Already!

It's very hard to believe, but some inconsiderate folks over on the Southside shot off fireworks at 11:00 last evening. March 27th makes to argument that celebrating this great nations independence with fireworks pretty lame. Perhaps it's time more considerate folks living in Bellingham get more involved in the effort to get consumer fireworks banned in our City.

Northwest Citizen Article

Local activist Richard Conoboy recently posted, in the Northwest Citizen, an interesting article regarding a ban of consumer fireworks in our City. It's started some spirited discussion regarding this issue. You can get involved on-line in the discussion by visiting http://www.nwcitizen.com/entry/fireworks-in-bellingham.