[MI-Roger]

Four nights of non-stop banging and booming this past weekend caused by illegal fireworks in my neighborhood. Some idiots were launching commercial size mortar shells from their subdivision lots.

Has anyone heard of house, garage, barn, or brush fires started by these displays without regard for safety? The air was thick with the stench of a wood/structure fire when I walked the dog at 4:30am this morning.

[wagonman76]

I don't know but it was the same in my neighborhood. About 5 houses in a 1/4 mile radius were launching the big illegal ones with the glowing fragments raining down on our houses, cars, and the woods. One of them was my neighbors who only come up from Detroit once in a while to get drunk and party. They were launching them from the middle of the street last night between their house and mine. One of them tipped over and shot horizontally into my yard, came close to hitting my car but thankfully it didn't. We were getting scared.

[Coldjensens]

I think it is pretty much the same everywhere. The police cannot really do a lot about it unless they are going to arrest 60% of the residents. They sell these fireworks in Michigan. It is just illegal to use them here. Ohio does the same thing and Tennessee sells even ore powerful ones if you want them.

I have not reard of any significant fires in the past 5 years from this. The only one that I know of is a street sweeper that had its hopper catch on fire after sweeping up some fireworks left in the street that were still smoldering.

[chiroptera]

A metal scrap yard burned down in the Flint area last night, but it probably wasn't due to fireworks:

Spooner Metals has had several previous fires in past | MLive.com

I was camping on private property in SW Michigan over the weekend...in the distance we could hear a LOT of (illegal/loud) fireworks on Saturday and Sunday night. Several fire trucks went by on the small road nearby but it rained a few times over the weekend down there and we didn't hear about any fires.

When I lived in Flint city, it sounded like Bahgdad for a few weeks around July 4....police would do nothing about all the illegal fireworks but I don't recall any news stories about fires.

[detwahDJ]

The guy that did this in my old Detroit neighborhood was a GP cop.

[tjay]

never been a fan of the fireworks. wasted $ if you ask me...

[Retroit]

This incident happened about 15 years ago. Some kids on the next block were shooting off fireworks one day. I was out in the yard working when the little boy next door said "LOOK, that house is on fire!" I looked to where the kid was pointing and sure enough there were flames coming from the roof gutter and some of the shingles of another neighbor's house. I told the boy to go knock on the door and ring the doorbell while I raced to get the garden hose. By the time I got the hose on the fire, the occupants of the house were racing outside and getting their own hose on the fire (which they had fortuitously left hooked up - good idea!). We both put out the fire fairly quickly, but the home owner called the fire department as a precaution. The fire chief told him that a few seconds more and the fire would have gone into the attic space and spread rapidly.

From then on, I've cleaned out my gutters regularly and leave the hose hooked up if there are any fireworks being launched in the area (fortunately there hasn't been lately).

[dav51lin]

ban fireworks

[Retroit]

Originally Posted by dav51lin

ban fireworks

Good luck with putting a billion dollar industry out of business.