About 700 fireworks sellers pay $200,000 in license fees

DES MOINES - Iowa just completed its first period of legal sales and use of consumer fireworks in eight decades.

Fireworks sales ended July 8, but are set to resume Dec. 10 through Jan. 3, 2018, under the auspices of the state fire marshal division of the Iowa Department of Public Safety and of local agencies.

State Fire Marshal Jeff Quigle's office was given a short period from the time Senate File 489 was signed in May to establish a consumer fireworks seller license and a fee schedule, inspect permanent and temporary sales facilities, and assist in providing fireworks safety education programming before the products went on sale last month.

Q: What is your assessment of Iowa's return to legal consumer fireworks?

A: I think as far as the licensing, we were able to accomplish a large amount of work in short order. We licensed almost 700 retailers. I think that overall was very successful. We did have some injuries throughout the state, unfortunately. We did push out a lot of educational statements, we did quite a few press releases and we also had several companies that also handed out safety pamphlets and tried to push out the safety messaging. I'd like to work a little more in that arena for that cycle that starts Dec. 10 for permanent retailers. Obviously, that selling period won't be quite as large as the summer selling period because it is in the wintertime. We did feel that our online licensing portal really helped to expedite the process because we didn't have a lot of time to issue a paper-type license.

For the first year and not having had legalized fireworks for ... 80 years, I think overall it was fairly successful. We'll just to wait and see what the Legislature does, if they make any tweaks or changes to the bill. We did utilize the standard that the National Fire Protection Association adopts for fireworks that deals with both retail sales and storage, which was a very good document for us to use for enforcement.

Q: Did you feel your office had adequate lead time to get the program up and running?

A: Ideally, we would have liked to have had the summer to get ready and then start it up in December, but the Legislature wanted us to push this out for July 4 and I get that because it is a big selling season for the retailers. Yes, it would have been nice to have a little longer time, but I think we kind of did all-hands-on-deck and devoted the resources that we had to this and I feel pretty good about what we did.

Basically, bottom line, we put a program together that normally takes about six to nine months to get done and we did it in about eight weeks. We didn't have any additional resources. There were about five to six of us that were the main team that made everything happen. I feel what the Fire Marshal's office did was pretty successful. I'm hoping that maybe for the next main selling season that we may possibly be able to have some additional assistance with maybe one employee or two to help out. It's a lot of work for a very, very short amount of time. It's very intense and we try to get everything done so that people can buy fireworks. It was very, very popular, especially on the eastern side of the state. We couldn't have done it without our local fire partners. This was definitely growing pains, and I know coming into the December season and even next year we will be just that much better and on top of our game and know what to do and help the program be more successful.

Q: What were the biggest challenges?

A: I would say the biggest challenge probably was we had a licensing software that we had been using for fire alarm installers, sprinkler installers, explosive blasters and (other) alarm systems. It would have been nice to have had a little bit more time to have all that system tweaked. We had some issues. At one time it got overloaded and it locked up for about four hours just due to the demand of the retailers coming in. I know when we start the next cycle, we'll be in much better play. That would probably be one of the largest hurdles that we had just making sure that licensing software worked properly.

I'm just a little disappointed with some of the injuries because a lot of them were very much preventable. We told everyone do not hold a firework in your hand unless it's a type of a firework that's designed to hold in your hand. We had some issues with some hand injuries. No one was killed, but we did have some pretty serious injuries scattered around the state. Also, there may have been two or three house or garage fires that were fireworks related. Definitely, more injuries than fires and I do know that a lot of cities were dealing with complaint issues, especially like people not following the hours that they were supposed to be shooting them.

Safety has always been our concern - not only safety with just the shooting of them, but we also wanted to make certain that the fireworks retailers and especially the stands were safe for workers and for the citizens who come to purchase fireworks. That was always foremost in what we wanted to do. That's why we spent the time to review each site plan and we did the inspections to make certain that the site plan that was presented to us was actually what was out there in the parking lot. We did run into a few that needed some work, but overall that part worked pretty well.

Mainly the complaints we had were with the small stands.

Q: Any idea if the fees collected are going to cover the cost of administering the program?

A: We collected in excess of $200,000 in fees, both for the fire marshal's office and to help push out safety material. As far as tax revenue that was collected on the sales of the fireworks, I think the Iowa Department of Revenue plans to have those numbers potentially by the end of July.