Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/07/06/buzzkill-alert-the-thousands.html
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Can’t the CA legislature just require zero-emissions fireworks??
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/sarc
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Freedom Farts
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Still totally worth it.
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Fireworks are a pest. Where I live, of course, no 4th of July, but new year full of cheap, often disastrously dangerous fireworks, some illegally imported from Poland.
Some years ago, a rare, century old high altar made of wood burned down in my town because a stray rocket entered a church window. Aside for being a huge mess of dirt and pollution, hours and days of terror for pets that often run away in panic and a danger for old and young, because people not only act carelessly but often dangerously and even violently with fireworks, there’s no beauty in a firework made of thousands of cheap crackers and rockets; not forgetting people from warzones, with trauma and PTSD, having to endure this mess in horror.
I wished for years that private fireworks got banned forever and that instead, people could donate for a nice, professional firework that almost everyone could enjoy and that would only last the time it’s supposed to.
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Fireworks are illegal all over the Denver Metro area because back in the 1870’s, Denver burned to the ground - twice in three years. But the people who come here illegally from countries where there is no Rule of Law (Mexico, California, Wyoming), just set off thousands of dollars worth of poor-quality and dangerous fireworks because it’s all about proving that you’re not taking orders from The Man.
Denver’s ‘Brick Ordinance’ requiring builders to use brick
Edit: GMA crawler reports 24 dead, 49 injured in Mexico City fireworks explosion
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100% agree. Professional fireworks shows are great, they look beautiful, are relatively safe they start and end, and you can choose to attend or not. Unlike the amateurs throwing M80s in the subway (above ground in my neighborhood) tracks outside my apartment window, giving my kids night terrors and startled wake ups until 1:30am last night. I can’t think of many things MORE appropriate to leave to licensed professionals.
ETA:And not to be gauche, but I’ll quote myself from another thread:
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The richness of the irony of getting exercised over one evening’s festivities in a city crammed with a gazillion million internal combustion engines is deep, chocolatey, and delicious.
Besides, breathing that gunpowder residue is good training for when The Revolution comes.
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At least it’s not “space bullets”.
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That which does not kill us (right away) makes us stronger slowly erodes our health, causing a slow, extended death with fine particulate overload and toxic substances causing emphysema and possibly cancer?
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Pollution? Lets add burning tires, upholstery and engine parts:
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Read article. Different kind of pollution.
Read article. This is what it says:
“In Southern California, the eruption of smoke from fireworks adds to what is already some of the nation’s worst-polluted air.”
Hence irony.
Want more irony? That pm 2.5 pollution that concerns city officials so much that they ask citizens to curb their use? Also ascribed to the expensive professional fireworks shows that the area cities put on every year.
And the L.A.Times - the same publisher of the article in question - has another article which lists 16 places people can go to see the public displays all up close and inhalable, sorry, all up close and personal.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Swarms of drones make for much better showmanship. And spending $20,000 on a bunch of flying LEDs means you still have (most of) them after the show is over!
Ultimately I don’t think think the problem is how we choose to mark the occasion, it’s what the thing is we are celebrating. We are long overdue for something different.
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Oh, we get that in California, too. Any city that has immigrants from rural Mexico, for example, where people are used to that sort of thing. (E.g. my former next-door neighbor who shot his pistol into the air every New Year’s Eve.) Pulled a .38 slug from the roof where it was causing a significant leak some years back. These days the illegal fireworks have gotten so bad, I can’t tell the gunshots from the other explosions - it’s like a war zone. And yeah, not just July 4th but also New Years, May 5th, Easter, people’s birthdays…
Drives the dog insane. I can’t leave the house on or around July 4th, New Years or May 5th because I’m afraid he’ll hurt himself.
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Not very catchy. Maybe works as an acronym?
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I don’t think the people setting off illegal fireworks (and firing their guns into the air, arriba!) give a damn about air pollution. So in this case, the more you know… the more you shrug and reach for the EXPLOD 2000GRAMM.
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But bear in mind that that is exactly the state of the law in California - every single one of the sky shells in that video are illegal to possess, use, or sell without a permit, anywhere in California.
https://www.fire.lacounty.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/LACoFD-Fireworks-Code-2017.pdf
That’s the State code, which does permit “safe and sane” fireworks — small pyro effects that don’t leave the ground or explode, and don’t run afoul of any of the other Dangerous Fireworks prohibitions, like the toxic-chemical restrictions — but LA County is even more restrictive: no fireworks of any kind are legal outside of permitted public shows, anywhere in LA County…
And this is the result.
Just because you outlaw something doesn’t mean it goes away.
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Well I’m relieved to know the legal fireworks don’t cause air pollution, just those pesky illegal ones… 
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there is NO way those fireworks happened anywhere in CA.
it is illegal!
people don’t DO illegal things! that’s why banning all the other illegal things works so well. Just legislate all the “bad” things right out of existence!
i do believe I’ll sit and pen a letter to my state rep asking her office to ban farting. I am totally sick of smelling this other guys farts. Once it is illegal? I’ll be free to toodle about my day in a fart free environment.
(sarcasm, btw)
San Jose was also lit UP on the 4th
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