Dear Fireworks Fanatics:
We know you disagreed with the ordinance approved this week by Wheeling Council.
We know you realize fireworks that leave the ground once lit have been illegal since 1981, and we know that City Ordinance 1535.01 has meant nothing to you in years past. You have known that those bottle rockets, sky lanterns, Roman candles, sky rockets, and other pyrotechnics that fly and explode are prohibited, and yet most neighborhoods are inundated with such fireworks for a few weeks each summer.
Here are the issues with that fact: Fireworks can cause house fires, and they often malfunction, resulting in injury.
Most neighborhoods in Wheeling have dwellings that rest a mere few feet from each other, and that is why the municipality’s lawmakers have granted permission for only sparklers, fountains, party poppers, snaps, and smoke devises. It also is why, this past Tuesday Council members voted 5-1 to increase the fine for possessing the illegal fireworks from $100 to $500.
Think about it. In what area in the city of Wheeling, other than the banks of the front and back channels of the Ohio River, do you think it is 100 percent completely safe to launch even a bottle rocket let alone something larger?
Everyone enjoys a great fireworks show, and that is why the City of Wheeling and several other communities in the Upper Ohio Valley spend taxpayers’ money to hire trained, certified, and licensed pyrotechnic technicians to light up the skies.
Leave it to them.
Sincerely,
Friendly City Property Owners
