Spokane's success shows what can be done if a city adopts an easily understandable and enforceable fireworks ordinance, reaches out to educate it's citizens as to what the ordinance means and then enforces it's ordinance fairly and consistently. The City of Bellingham can do the same thing that Spokane and fifty-seven (57) other cities in our State have done. Let's do it!
Lisa Jones, Fire Marshal of the Spokane Fire Department, recently provided the graphs below which illustrate this success of Spokane's ban. Some explanation is required: The ban was put in place in 1992. After 10-years, yearly data, for a period of June 28 through July 6, was gathered for the 10-years before and 10-years after the ban was enacted. The comparison of the number of firework-related injuries and fireworks-related fires for these two periods is stunning:
(NOTE: "Left Click" on graph to enlarge.)
As shown in this top graph, injuries dropped 87% from 290 between 1983 and 1992 to 37 between 1993 and 2002. Since 2003, there have been 49 fireworks-related injuries, with no fireworks-related injuries in 2012.
(NOTE: "Left Click" on graph to enlarge.)
As shown in this bottom graph, fires dropped 95% from 1043 between 1983 and 1992 to 46 between 1993-2002. Since 2003, there have been 47 fireworks-related fires, with just a single fireworks-related fire in 2012.Spokane's Fire Marshal, Lisa Jones, attributes much of the success of the Spokane ban to education and outreach to the public. An example of this is a 6/28/12 press conference which you can check out here. Later . . .
