Tulsa Police, Fire Expecting Calls About Illegal Fireworks

We'll be seeing a lot of fireworks over the next few days, many of them professional displays, like Rockets Over Rhema. But many will be setting fireworks off on their own; some legal and some not, depending on where you're using them, and, in some cases, if you have a permit.

In the county, outside incorporated areas, fireworks are legal, but everywhere inside Tulsa they're not; that's why the fireworks stands are all just outside the city. Despite that, there will be plenty of people using fireworks in Tulsa.

There were plenty of customers at one fireworks stand in Jenks; it's a fundraiser for the band.

"Sales have been great. We've had a steady stream of customers, so we're excited by that," said Assistant Band Director, Julie Arnold.

The customers paid from 50 cents to well over $50 for fireworks they can use at home. When they get to the cash register they have the opportunity to spend $20 on the permit to use them inside the Jenks city limits.

"People are buying them pretty well, those people in Jenks. There's a lot of people going to the lake who don't need them or going somewhere else, but the people in Jenks are pretty well buying them," Arnold said.

The fireworks that are sold in stands, even those right outside the city, are illegal in all cases in the city limits of Tulsa.

It's illegal to buy or sell them or to bring them into the city; though the only real enforcement is against the people who use them.

Every year the fire marshal's office writes a handful of $220 tickets to people using fireworks.

Captain Rick Bruder, with the Tulsa Fire Department, said, "So we'll give them some latitude and tell them ‘hey this is illegal, you have go outside the city to shoot them off,' but if we get called back that's when we'll confiscate the fireworks and write them a ticket."

The fire department considers fireworks both a personal injury and fire hazard and every year something happens to reinforce their opinion.

"It is a fire hazard, especially if we've had dry weather, and in neighborhoods with wood roofs; they're horrible about catching bottle rockets or any firework and catching those on fire," Bruder said.

Fireworks sales are limited to certain times of year and the permits restrict when they can be used, and it all varies by community.

In Tulsa, where fireworks are illegal in all cases, the police and fire department expect lots of calls about people using them.