Editorial: Maybe it’s time to ban fireworks
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the July 2, 2018, Sacramento Bee.
It has become a kind of July tradition: Counting the ways in which California’s fire season is now more dangerous.
Every summer around this time, the red flags grow redder: the dry air, the triple-digit heat, the dying trees in the wilderness, the chaparral rattling in the foothills. Every summer around this time, some fiery apocalypse erupts somewhere in the state as if to drive home the message.
It’s time to align California’s laws with the modern costs and benefits of celebrations that involve explosives. If we can’t bring ourselves to ban fireworks entirely during our now nearly year-round fire season, we should at least outlaw them during red-flag conditions.