Santa Maria begins annual fireworks education and enforcement outreach efforts
Dave Alley
SANTA MARIA, Calif. – With the 4th of July approaching, the City of Santa Maria is once again rolling out a three-pronged approach regarding fireworks this year, which includes education, enforcement and entertainment.
To help inform the public about important information dealing with fireworks both legal and illegal, a bilingual educational campaign is now underway.
As in previous years, information is being disseminated to the public through television and radio public service announcements (PSAs), social media posts, flyers, posters and other forms of communication.
“We want to get the message out to the community that illegal fireworks are dangerous,” said Mark van de Kamp, Santa Maria PublicInformation Manager. “Not only are they dangerous with the loud noises that they make, there’s a lot of people in our community who just don’t deal very well with that. They may be veterans. We have a lot of veterans in Santa Maria, people with autism and with PTSD. It’s the worst day of the year for animals. We are very well aware of the magnitude of the problem. Over the years, people have come to the City Council. I’ve had phone calls with people who are almost in tears because very upset about the use of illegal fireworks, so the City Council has requested and directed the staff to do something about it.”
The Santa Maria Police Department recently started its Fireworks Enforcement Operation, with officers monitoring social media for fireworks sales and actively patrolling neighborhoods for fireworks usage.
“The Santa Maria Police Department is currently teamed up with fire prevention and code enforcement, and we’ve started our enforcement period for fire fireworks enforcement,” said Santa Maria Police Department Lt. Danny Rios. “We are going to start with areas that are known to have a history of illegal firework activity. We’re going to look at those areas first and then branch out from there. This week we have started issuing our admin citations that carry a maximum penalty of $1,000. We are going to continue working with fire and code enforcement to proactively seek out those that are engaging in the use of illegal fireworks. In addition to some targeted proactive enforcement, we’re also going to be monitoring social media accounts for those that are selling illegal fireworks and look to target those, through investigative resources. We also ask that the public report illegal firework activity.”
In addition, the city will hold a new community event on Independence Day called “Red, White and PLAY: A Hometown Celebration.”
The free event will take place from noon to 4 p.m. at Elks Field, which is located the Abel Maldonado Youth Center at 600 South McClelland Street.
The city describes the event as an “afternoon of entertainment, engaging activities and patriotic fun for all ages.”
“It’s very family friendly,” said van de Kamp. “We’re going to have a band that’s a tribute band to Santana called Savor and they’ll be playing for a couple of hours. Bring some lawn chairs. Enjoy it. We’ll have food for sale. The pool will be open. The youth center will be open. There’ll be lots of games, painting contests and a watermelon eating contest, so really good stuff. It should be a real draw for for people of all ages.”
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