PORT ANGELES — The City Council will consider limiting or banning the personal use of fireworks for 2016 after reviewing a proposal in January.
Council members are looking for direction from a citizens group that showed up in force at Tuesday night’s council meeting to urge enactment of a ban.
“The celebration has evolved into a state of siege in our neighborhood,” said Milwaukee Drive resident Suzanne Hadley.
Fireworks are allowed within city limits only from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. July Fourth.
Illegal use of fireworks — either those too dangerous to be legal or those set off before 9 a.m. or after 11 p.m. July Fourth — is a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine.
A change in the law can go into effect a year after passage, Fire Chief Ken Dubuc said at the council meeting.
If the council enacts a ban, Port Angeles would follow Port Townsend as the second city on the North Olympic Peninsula to outlaw the personal use of fireworks.
City staff will come forward with a proposal offered by the group, Dubuc said.
“This is a completely citizen-driven action at this point,” he added Wednesday.
Jan Butler, founder of the Port Angeles political action group Safer 4th of July, said members want to ban the random use of personal fireworks but have not yet firmed up a proposal.
“I don’t see any other way around this but a ban,” she said Wednesday.
“That’s what we’re moving toward, but we want to present alternatives.”
Butler said the group, on Facebook under Safer 4th of July, wants to accommodate celebrants who set off personal fireworks by looking for a confined area inside or outside the city limit — and where the fireworks don’t bother residents.
She said she plans to present a proposal at the council’s regular meeting Jan. 6.
Butler, who has eight birds at her home on South I Street, said her pets bash themselves against their cages during neighborhood fireworks and that her rescue parrot, Mr. Bea, died in 2006 after a noisy July Fourth.
She said she dropped her subsequent effort at restricting fireworks in the city after she was met with strong resistance from residents, including some who questioned her patriotism.
Since then, she said, resistance has grown in reaction to the cacophony of fireworks from well before July Fourth to well after the holiday.
At the council meeting, nine residents described city neighborhoods held hostage by the booms and whistles of fireworks, and dogs and other pets terrified to the point of physical harm.
Hadley challenged council members to be the leaders that citizens elected them to be.
“Put a ban on personal fireworks within the city without delay,” she said.
South Laurel Street resident Robert Nevaril’s neighborhood is “like a war zone that’s escalated year after year,” he said, describing a lamppost that exploded.
Police Chief Terry Gallagher told council members the problem is citywide and impossible to control.
As a misdemeanor, the crime of illegally setting off fireworks must be committed in the officer’s presence for the offender to be cited.
“We are only as effective as our citizens let us be,” Gallagher said.
“When we show up in a neighborhood, the evidence has blown up, and people are not willing to offer testimony from an enforcement perspective.
“Firing off fireworks on any day but the Fourth of July is breaking the law, and there are several hundred people out there who don’t care about that,” the police chief said.
At the close of Tuesday’s meeting, Mayor Dan De Guilio said he was “very sympathetic” to residents and animals concerned about the holiday racket.
“We just welcomed a new puppy to the family, and we have already begun to condition her with what’s going to happen New Year’s Eve and most certainly on July Fourth,” he said.
“If we could address that problem, I’d appreciate it.”
Councilman Lee Whetham described the “new world” of fireworks in which powerful mortars are as common as single firecrackers once were.
“It is a war zone over on the west side, and I would appreciate any kind of help we could get,” he said.
Whetham suggested gauging public sentiment toward a ban through an advisory ballot.
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Senior Staff Writer Paul Gottlieb can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5060, or at pgottlieb@peninsuladailynews.com.
