Pinellas County fire marshals are enforcing the first year of an ordinance that restricts fireworks to sparkling, hissing and whistling..
By KELLY VIRELLA
Published June 23, 2004
[Times photo: Dirk Shadd]
Rhonda Huntley of Riverview waits for customers at Universe Novelty and Fireworks in St. Petersburg on Tuesday. The stand was visited by St. Petersburg Fire Rescue Lt. Rick Feinberg, who inspected the inventory and removed items that were not on the state list of approved fireworks. The county tightened a loophole on sales, and fire marshals can fine businesses.
[Times photo: Ken Helle]
In Tampa, Galaxy Fireworks is selling a 36-shot cake device. In Pinellas, fire marshals are pulling explosive devices from stores.
FIREWORKS
REGULATIONS * Florida law says fireworks can be used only in quarrying, on railroads, or to scare birds from farms and fish hatcheries.
* Many fireworks stores post the law and require customers to sign a form saying they have read it. But the state law is routinely disregarded.
* Pinellas County's new ordinance, however, requires sellers to get permits to operate and keep records showing that each customer has a special fireworks permit.
PINELLAS PARK - The shelves of Fireworks Mania are crowded with a staggering variety of paper-wrapped sparklers, smoke bombs and fountains.
But in a 90-minute period Tuesday, customers wandered into the store only three times. In the past, two weeks before the Fourth of July, the manager said, 15 to 20 would be browsing and almost all would walk away with explosive fireworks.
"We have to go across the bridge to Hillsborough County for that," said Crystal Webber, a St. Pete Beach woman who had a 6-year-old and 3-year-old in tow. "We get the kiddie ones here and the adult ones there."
Pinellas County residents soon will be celebrating the first July Fourth since the county passed an ordinance to close a loophole in state law that bans most people from using fireworks that blow up or go up.
Things can sparkle. They can smoke. They can hiss. They can whistle. But if they bang, the buyer and the seller now must have a permit approved by the county.
Customers and store owners say all the ordinance does is force them to go to another county to buy the real thing. Fireworks Mania is setting up tents in Hillsborough to sell its leftover stock of heavy-duty fireworks.
"They're not keeping fireworks out of this county," said Jim Ross, manager of Fireworks Mania. "They're only hurting businesses."
But fire marshals defend the new ordinance. It promises to reduce injuries and fires, said Dwaine Booth, assistant director of EMS/Fire Administration for the county.
Sunday night, Georgia Meat Market, a St. Petersburg grocery, caught fire when an incense candle ignited the store's stock of illegal fireworks, fire officials said.
"Every year we have 25 to 50 people who get burned or whose houses get burned," during the July Fourth celebration, Booth said. "Our goal is to keep people safe."
Ken Welch, the county commissioner who sponsored the ordinance, said people from all over the county were calling to thank him for getting it onto the books.
A Sarasota man who stopped by a tent Tuesday in the parking lot of Central Plaza, a St. Petersburg shopping center, said his pursuit of powerful fireworks was sending him farther from home every year. Sarasota County has a fireworks ordinance similar to Pinellas'.
At the tent, Simon Taylor, 36, was looking for a crackling whip, which he said he could use as a fuse for a stack of rockets. The store did not have it. "Tampa is my limit," he said, leaving the tent. "If I can't find it within 75 miles or 100 miles, that's it."
The saleswoman who set up the tent where he was shopping works for Universe Fireworks Co., a Hillsborough County business. Rhonda Huntley of Riverview said she was confident her sales would pick up.
"We got the stuff for the kids to put on a pretty show," Huntley said. "People buy this stuff just as well as they buy that."
Huntley's tent was one of the businesses fire marshals inspected in the past few days. Lt. Rick Feinberg, a fire marshal with St. Petersburg Fire Rescue, ordered her to remove at least four products from the shelves Tuesday, saying they were not state-approved.
In St. Petersburg, at least three other businesses have been ordered to remove contraband items from their shelves, Feinberg said.
State law bans most fireworks except for certain purposes, such as scaring birds from fish farms. Before the Pinellas ordinance, many buyers got around that ban by signing a form saying they were using the fireworks for a legal purpose. But now there's the permit requirement.
Workers at Citrus Country Groves, a business that was selling banned items under a tent in the parking lot of Tyrone Square Mall, voluntarily shut down Monday night after Feinberg dropped by, he said.
Booth and fire marshals with the county's 19 fire departments are not relying on sellers to police themselves through the honor system. They are inspecting as many specialty stores, seasonal tents and retail outlets such as supermarkets as possible.
The only business in Pinellas that has a county permit to sell heavy-duty fireworks is Fireworks Mania. But the county has not issued any permits to buyers, Booth said.
At other stores, fire marshals are ordering owners to remove any items that do not appear on the state's approved list.
Fire marshals can fine a business $25 per incident, Booth said. Obstinate store owners could see the fine double for each incident. Flagrant violators could be arrested.
