A Honolulu City Council measure to allow the legal sale, purchase and use of fireworks that have been banned in the city for over a decade has fizzled for the second time in less than a month.
In a 4-4 vote Thursday, the Council failed to override Mayor Rick Blangiardi’s Oct. 25 veto on Bill 22. That measure, first adopted by the Council in early October, would have lifted the city’s partial fireworks ban to allow “consumer fireworks” like ground-level fountains and sparklers to be lit in public on Oahu.
The possession and use of fountains, sparklers, aerial fireworks and other consumer fireworks has not been legally permitted since the partial pyrotechnics ban took effect in 2011.
The Council’s veto override required its reconsideration to be passed by an affirmative vote of not less than two-thirds of the entire membership of the Council — or six of the nine members. Because the bill, per the Honolulu City Charter, failed to receive the necessary two-thirds vote, it’s now deemed “finally lost.”
On Oct. 9 the Council voted 8-1, with Matt Weyer dissenting, on what would have been the third and final reading for Bill 22.
But Blangiardi, citing the Honolulu Fire Department’s opposition to the measure, asserted that the bill’s enactment by the Council risked public safety. The mayor vetoed the measure 16 days later.
At Tuesday’s meeting a contingent of HFD personnel appeared alongside Blangiardi — who did not speak on the item — to caution the Council that adding more fireworks on Oahu posed greater harm to the community.
To emphasize their concerns, HFD Deputy Fire Chief Jason Samala read the department’s official mission statement. “The community we serve and protect are our families, friends, visitors, and each other,” he said. “Our mission is to provide for their safety through prevention, preparedness, and an effective emergency response.”
He added, “It’s pretty simple … our purpose is to protect the community.”
“I want you guys to highly consider Bill 22 and the impacts it may have on our community,” Samala told the Council. “I think we all (agree) that we want to provide for a safer community, it’s just more about how we go about doing it. I think there’s other effective means of providing entertainment for our community, while providing safety for all of them.”
Saying HFD did not support Bill 22, Battalion Chief Pao-Chi Hwang, with the fire prevention bureau, said, “In the state of Hawaii, fireworks have been identified as a health and safety issue.”
Hwang noted the state has prepared “several reports over the years” with findings that show consumer fireworks cause fires and burn injuries primarily to children; fireworks produce excessive smoke, making breathing difficult; and the noise of fireworks traumatizes some pets and residents, including war veterans.
“Responding to fireworks-related calls strains the resources of public safety agencies such as ours and threatens our ability to respond to other emergencies; our data has supported this,” he added. “Fireworks-related injuries and fires fell by over 70% after the ban on consumer fireworks.”
“If Bill 22 passes, we anticipate a dramatic increase in fireworks-related injuries and fires,” said Hwang. “Fireworks are not only hazardous to the public, but I have to say they risk the lives of my fellow firefighters here that respond to them.”
Others against Bill 22 included the Hawaiian Humane Society, which noted the fireworks’ impacts on pets and animals, as well as West Oahu residents concerned about the use of legal and illegal fireworks on or near dry, agricultural lands.
Among those who spoke in support of Bill 22, Tad Trout of TNT Fireworks, a large distributor of fireworks in the United States, lobbied for the business side of the industry. Others expressed their desire to use fireworks for cultural purposes, par- ticularly for celebratory events within various Asian communities.
However, the biggest proponent of Bill 22 was the person who first sponsored the measure.
“It was a bill that was trying to address ‘safe and sane’ fireworks,” Council member Calvin Say said before the vote. “And being ‘safe and sane,’ we’re addressing sparklers that sometimes you see on our birthday cakes, or fountains that you light and just hold it in your hand, hold it to the sky.”
He added, “It is prohibition that is the major cause of the black market” of illegal fireworks, he said, “but for me it’s not just a cultural (practice), but a question of civil rights, human rights, one’s rights.”
“As the leaders responsible for our community, yes, it is essential to balance the safety concerns with the desire of what I said earlier, our personal freedom and long-standing customs,” he added.
Say noted that since the city’s ban “we have seen a marked increase in the use of illegal aerial fireworks, and even those homemade bombs that we hear in Palolo Valley.”
Say, along with Chair Tommy Waters, Andria Tupola and Val Okimoto, voted in support of Bill 22 and the veto override, basing some of their views on the “personal responsibility” of individual fireworks users.
But Weyer, originally Bill 22’s lone dissenter on the Council, explained he’d also oppose overriding the mayor’s veto.
He added that “having a clear-cut boundary” makes it easier to enforce the existing fireworks ban, “versus having to require law enforcement to go in and analyze what type of products are being used and is this what’s allowed or this is what’s not allowed,” he said.
“I totally think relying on personal responsibility is reasonable, but at the same time, this isn’t the type of situation that only affects the individual making the decision.”
Weyer added, “The fire doesn’t stop at your house; it affects your neighbor’s house, it affects the agricultural lands, the rural lands, and same with the injuries, right?”
Three others — Radiant Cordero, Tyler Dos Santos-Tam and Esther Kia‘aina — rejected the veto override.
Following their initial support for Bill 22’s adoption in October, the trio said they’d heard from residents in their respective Council districts strongly opposed to the fireworks measure and would change their votes.
But Council member Augie Tulba, appearing remotely at Tuesday’s Council meeting, who’d testified in support of overriding the mayor’s veto on Bill 22, was considered absent.
At the meeting, Waters said Tulba left town due to a family-related emergency.
Tulba’s abrupt departure, however, made him ineligible to vote, as it was a scheduled regular Council meeting and not a remote meeting, according to Waters.
Aron Dote, the Council’s chief public information officer, confirmed this situation after the meeting.
“Yes, Council member Tulba is ineligible to vote on any measure on the Nov. 7 full Council hearing as stated under Hawaii Revised Statutes 92-3,” also known as the open meetings or Sunshine Law, Dote told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “The November full Council meeting was established as a ‘regular meeting,’ at the point of notification to the public.”
