San Jacinto (Riverside) CA bans safe and sane fireworks

Reporter's notebook

By CHARLES HAND/The Valley Chronicle
Agustin Gutierrez

http://www.thevalleychronicle.com/articles/2007/05/11/news/07nnotebook.txt

Forbidding fireworks

A fix to a hole in the law prohibiting fireworks in San Jacinto has been introduced.

Though state law prohibits some fireworks, officers have found devices smaller than those covered by the law, said Police Chief Kevin Vest.

Riverside County adopted a more comprehensive ban last year, and the proposed city law is based on that.

At the moment, the only city law prohibiting the use of fireworks applies only in city parks, Vest said.

Vest said the major reasons for banning the possession, use, or storage of fireworks in the city are that 45 percent of the injuries from fireworks are sustained by those younger than 15, that they can be dismantled to make larger explosive devices, and that the area has repeatedly seen extreme fire danger and extended fire seasons.

People also sometimes fail to understand the danger of large explosions from the storage of small fireworks in quantity, Vest said.