Published: August 31, 2008 11:43 pm      

Engineer says fireworks may be cash cow for firefighters

CHARLESTON — Legalizing fireworks is an idea that gives some folks the jitters in both the Legislature and within the ranks of firefighters in West Virginia.

Even if the idea is to create a new revenue stream and divert some of it into a proposed pension fund for volunteer fire departments, some veterans in the field wonder about the wisdom of making legal a practice that might spawn fires or lead to serious injuries, even death.

Retired chemical engineer Cliff Rotz, a principal backer of legalization, says the facts are on the side of his proposal.

“Those who ask of deaths and serious injuries are insinuating a danger which is more misunderstanding or hype than reality,” says Rotz, who is attempting to revive a stalled bill co-authored last winter by Sens. Shirley Love, D-Fayette, and Billy Wayne Bailey, D-Wyoming.

West Virginia allows the sale of sparklers and other innocuous fireworks. The newest measure would impose a 10 percent levy on top of the traditional 6 percent sales tax to finance a pension fund.

A special legislative panel is looking at the Rotz proposal in a broad spectrum of issues that are confronting West Virginia’s struggling volunteer fire departments.

Rotz points out that 18 states and the Consumer Product Safety Commission regard the full range of backyard fireworks as safe.

One feature of the bill would require eye protective devices for anyone under 18, and that, coupled with education, would minimize the likelihood of injuries and deaths so that they are “very unlikely,” says Rotz, who once was a chemical engineer at Dow in Charleston.

While no one can provide a fail-safe guarantee on fireworks, Rotz acknowledged, critics need to understand that an average of 311 toddlers drown annually in non-pool environments, even buckets of water.

“But buckets or bathtubs remain legal,” he said.

“Many, if not most, serious so-called fireworks incidents right now result from illegal cherry bombs, etc., or the gross misuse of legal items.”

Even among the illegal items, the CPSC showed three people under 18 were killed in fireworks-related tragedies this year. One came in a fire prompted by a 4-year-old lighting fireworks indoors. Another was rooted in the explosion of an artillery shell shot in a “war” among friends. Another was the burst of an errant mortar that a dog bowled over, Rotz pointed out.

“All these were preventable,” he said. “Any death is a tragedy, but an education campaign can help prevent fireworks misuse.”

Rotz says the fireworks industry is getting a bum rap from a badly informed and sensation-seeking media.

For instance, when he was interviewed last week by a television reporter, he subsequently was “astonished and dismayed” to see footage used with the story of an illegal M-80 creaming a watermelon.

“This has nothing to do with the safe, CPSC-approved backyard fireworks I’m advocating,” Rotz said.

“Powerful, dangerous explosives such as M-80s and cherry bombs have been federally illegal for 42 years. They have a powder charge of perhaps 50 to 100 times the amount in a small, legal firecracker, which is less than one-sixth of an aspirin tablet. They are not fireworks and would not be legalized with this fireworks bill. I am hopeful that with legalization of true fireworks the bootleggers selling such dangerous items will go out of business.”

If anyone ever sought to make legal the types forbidden under federal law, Rotz says he would be the first man in town to resist such a move.

“I think fireworks suffer from the same bad press that the National Rifle Association and guns do, probably because most of our national media comes from giant urban areas where they are both strongly restricted or illegal,” he said.

“So in addition to the need to scare people to keep up ratings, much of the reporting is rife with ignorance.”

Rotz says he hopes his proposal wouldn’t cause overtime for fire departments, and pointed to a national study showing that misuse of fireworks figured in a mere .3 of 1 percent of all fires in 1997. In fact, electrical circuits were to blame in 7.5 percent of them.

“We also plan to suggest disallowing the shooting of flying fireworks during dry periods, as is now done for open burning during these times,” he said.

Nor is it for him to say just how any tax proceeds should be divvied up, Rotz emphasized, but said he sympathized with the “efforts of the selfless volunteer firefighters, and think it would be well worth paying a little more for our backyard fireworks to see them receive a little benefit for their service.”

As for liability concerns, Rotz said he assumes coverage would be provided by the same variety that now covers sparklers.

On enforcement, Rotz noted that an age of 16 is in force now to purchase sparklers, and his bill would raise that to 18 to buy the more “energetic” kinds of fireworks.

“It is up to the Legislature whether to truly have this dual set of age limits — the lower for existing items and the higher for the new items,” the Minnesota native said.

“The good news is that law enforcement costs should drop due to the legalization of items that many are already using.”

— E-mail:

mannix@register-herald.com