How to not be a jerk when setting off fireworks

This story was originally published in July 2023.

We’ve all experienced it. It’s nearing midnight on a hot summer night in Maine, and you’re already in bed. Just as you’re about to drift off to sleep, you hear BOOM. CRACK CRACK CRACK BOOM.

Somebody down the street is setting off fireworks. It is greatly upsetting the dog. The nice veteran a few houses down is feeling very nervous. And it’s just plain rude, to be honest.

No matter how many laws or ordinances are passed locally or statewide, little will stop people from being jerks with fireworks, or potentially seriously burning themselves, losing a finger or worse. Remember the young man in Calais, who back in 2015 was killed instantly after setting off a fireworks mortar on his head? We lost a former Disney World cast member — he played Gaston from “Beauty and the Beast” — due to irresponsibility around fireworks.

Fireworks were legalized by the Maine Legislature 12 years ago, and became available to purchase in stores in 2012, ending 63 years of statewide prohibition. Many towns and cities were quick to adopt ordinances prohibiting their use and sale within city limits, and as the years have gone on, a kind of basic etiquette has arisen around their usage.

Officially, 50 municipalities statewide have outright banned the sale and use of fireworks. Sixty more have placed restrictions on their use and sale but haven’t banned them completely.

Unofficially, it’s pretty rude to set off fireworks past 11 at night — even if everybody is partying at the lake and you’re just having a good time. Unofficially, it’s pretty rude to set them off in a neighborhood, whether or not your town has restrictions on them. And even if it’s legal, it’s rude to not tell your neighbors you’re doing it — especially if they have pets that are easily spooked, or they or a loved one suffer from PTSD.

And, of course, it behooves everyone to not be stupid about it. Burns and property damage can happen — or, worse, missing fingers, limbs, eye injuries or even death. You want to point your fireworks away from buildings, trees and people, including yourself. And you need to have water nearby.

Clockwise, from left: People watch fireworks near the Brewer Waterfront during the annual Kiwanis fireworks show over the Penobscot River on July 4, 2017. Credit: Ashley L. Conti / BDN; Christopher Reese of Dedham, reads the fine print of a box of fireworks at Big Bang Boom Fireworks in Holden in June 2020. Credit: Nick Sambides Jr. / BDN; Thousands of people watch the Fourth of July fireworks display on Portland’s East End on July 4, 2017. Credit: Troy R. Bennett / BDN

Fireworks became a part of Fourth of July celebrations before the ink was barely even dry on the Declaration of Independence, with Boston and Philadelphia holding their own fireworks displays in 1777. By the end of the 18th century, fireworks were available to purchase in towns and cities all over the young country — mostly imported from China, as the vast majority of fireworks in the U.S. still are today.

By the 1860s, Fourth of July celebrations had turned into wild and crazy affairs. Parades — often themed to be a “horrible” parade in which people would dress up in crazy costumes — would kick off an afternoon of rambunctious fun, often involving copious amounts of alcohol.

By nightfall, people were feeling mischievous — and possibly very drunk — and would set off fireworks literally anywhere. An ad for fireworks in an 1860 edition of the Bangor Daily Whig and Courier advertised colorful names like Bunker Hill crackers, cannon size Iron Sides, pinwheels, serpents, grasshoppers, torbillions, rockets, Fire Kings and “regrettables.” Buildings burned down. Every year, people were injured.

It was around that same time that the temperance movement in the U.S. began to really take off. Maine was a hotbed for organizing around the prohibition of alcohol, and some of the earliest victories in the movement occurred right here. The literally explosive combination of booze and fireworks made pro-temperance activists zero in on fireworks as a destructive partner to the demon rum or the whiskey devil. Drunk people setting off fireworks that caused injuries and burned down buildings was just one example of the havoc alcohol could cause in society.

Eventually, national prohibition was enacted in 1920. A national ban on fireworks never happened, but many states outlawed their usage by anyone other than licensed professionals, including large states like New York in 1909, California in 1938, Illinois in 1942, and finally, Maine in 1949. Fourth of July celebrations also began to stray from the unhinged merriment of the 19th and early 20th century, and into the family-friendly events we know today.

For 63 years, the only fireworks you’d see in Maine would be hand-held sparklers, the professionally staged ones permitted by cities and towns for various special occasions, or the ones illegally smuggled into the state from neighboring New Hampshire.

Eventually, though, attitudes began to shift. For starters, people were clearly still setting fireworks off in Maine — they were just buying them out of state, meaning the tax revenue went elsewhere. It didn’t make sense that New Hampshire residents were somehow responsible enough to sell and use them, but Mainers weren’t.

Maine state Rep. Doug Damon introduced a bill in 2011 to legalize consumer fireworks, both the House and Senate passed it, and on July 1, 2011, then Gov. Paul LePage signed it, stating that it would create jobs and bring in new tax revenue. The following year, fireworks stores opened up all over the state.

In 2012, statewide consumer fireworks sales in Maine were $6.94 million, though they have since dropped and now hover between $4 and $5 million each year, depending on the day of the week the Fourth of July falls on. A weekend Fourth means more sales, generally.

Today, 49 out of 50 states allow for some usage of fireworks, whether it is as conservative as Connecticut or Vermont, which only allow the use of sparklers, or as open as Indiana or Texas, which allow the use of pretty much anything available on the consumer market. There’s only one state that completely outlaws all fireworks including sparklers, and that’s Massachusetts.

So, this Fourth of July, as you’re planning your festivities and deciding whether or not to buy some shiny, blowy-uppy stuff, remember to check your local laws, be considerate of your neighbors, and, most of all — be safe.