Safety regulations, liability prevent fireworks

By Jacob Wheeler
Sun editor

To children all across the United States, Fourth of July fireworks are an annual event almost as memorable as opening presents on Christmas morning. Millions of tykes stay up past there bedtimes to watch the colorful aerial explosions, trading yawns for ooooohs and aaaaaahs, as red, white and blue fill up the festive sky. Over the years the Independence Day excitement in Glen Arbor has been no different … until now.
There will be no fireworks in Glen Arbor this year, ending a local tradition that has persevered for more than 30 years. Stringent safety regulations that Glen Arbor Fire Chief John DePuy says have not been followed in the past, coupled with the Township Board’s banning of a public fireworks display have made it impossible for the usual thousands of people to watch any fireworks over Lake Michigan from the edge of Lake Street.
“The Township will not take part in putting on fireworks that use volunteer firemen or don’t meet National Fire Protection Agency safety standards,” said Board member Robert Hawley. “I’m a volunteer fireman myself, and we have never been properly trained for these types of things.”
Glen Arbor’s fireworks cancellation is timely, following a major accident at the Venetian Festival in Charlevoix, MI last July 26 that killed one man and wounded several others. The tragedy occurred when a shell exploded in its steel firing tube, showering the crowd of thousands with shrapnel. Since then, police have speculated that the spacing of the launch tubes and the distance spectators were kept from the launch area didn’t comply with fireworks safety guidelines, the Traverse City Record Eagle reported.
The accident in Charlevoix served as an eye-opener for Glen Arbor, especially since the local fireworks displays in past years haven’t even come close to following NFPA standards. DePuy, who ran the fireworks from the end of Lake Street last year estimates that onlookers sat only 200 feet away from the dangerous cannons, and more than 1,000 people watched from the nearby stretch of beach. “We shot eight inch mortars last year,” DePuy said. “With that size you’d need a minimum secure distance of 1120 feet. You’d have to send people all the way to Glen Haven or to the Homestead for them to be safe.” DePuy also admits that the Fire Department has used outdated material to shoot off the displays in past years. “We lit them with flares at the end of a bamboo pole. We were supposed to use an electrical charge.”
A more difficult NFPA obstacle for Glen Arbor to work around was the houses near the beach, directly behind the cannons. Those are and have always been immobile, making aerial fireworks sent from the shore all but illegal in Glen Arbor. The one exception would be fireworks shot off from National Park land, where there is enough room in certain areas on the lake.
Faced with the knowledge that the National Park would never allow fireworks on its preserved land, the Glen Arbor Fire Department decided not to shoot off a display this year. But it never placed an outright ban on fireworks in Glen Arbor. In a letter that DePuy sent to Township Board Clerk Bonnie Quick on March 20, he stated that he had “no problem with having a fireworks display in the township providing that the following items are complied with:
1. The Glen Arbor Township is held harmless from any liability with regard to the fireworks display,
2. The Glen Arbor Fire Department or any of it’s members do not have any involvement in a fireworks display of any kind,
3. The fireworks display must conform with all the NFPA 1123 standards 1995 edition,
4. The Township Fire Chief has the right to inspect the site of the display to insure that it meets the NFPA 1123 standards, and has the authority to deny the use of the fireworks if it does not comply with the NFPA 1123 standards.
5. The Township Fire Department is to be provided a copy of the insurance policy showing that the Township is held harmless 60 days prior to the setting off of the display.”
Upon hearing the news that the Glen Arbor Fire Department would not provide the public with a fireworks display this year, Chamber of Commerce President Brad Anderson began searching for an alternate way to have them in town. “We talked it over as a Chamber group last winter and decided it would be in the best interest of the community as a whole to have them because of tradition and heritage,” Anderson said. “For the Township Board to pull the plug on something that celebrates this country’s independence without public interest is a travesty for this democracy — the very thing we’re celebrating.”
Anderson said he contacted a private fireworks company out of Grand Rapids and began preparing for them to put on a show. Meanwhile he asked Township Board Supervisor Ben Whitfield to rescind the Board’s ban on fireworks in Glen Arbor. But Anderson’s plea was rejected at the next Board meeting. “I had a contract lined up; I had liability insurance lined up,” Anderson said. “Then Ben faxed over the minutes from the spring meeting saying the Township Board was not going to rescind the ban — even after he told me ‘if you do these things, we’ll let you have fireworks.'”
Anderson claims the Grand Rapids group he wanted to hire was certainly capable of adhering to NFPA guidelines. But the Chamber President thinks he just wasn’t given a chance to put on fireworks without the Fire Department’s help. “We would’ve found a spot to do it,” he said. “My guy would have done it from a barge in the lake, or a pontoon boat if necessary. The fact is it didn’t get that far.”
Brad Anderson’s proposal to save the Glen Arbor fireworks never quite made it on the agenda at a Township Board meeting. That’s because “the Chamber didn’t come to the Board with a formal proposal,” said Board member Bob Hawley. “You have to get on the agenda three or four days ahead of time. You can’t just talk to one person on the Board.” This, it seems, is where the Glen Arbor fireworks took their last gasps of air. Above all else, fear for human safety and fear of the town’s liability prevented the kids their Fourth of July excitement.
The issue of liability has taken on a very serious tone since the filing of numerous lawsuits against city officials in Charlevoix. Victims of last summer’s accident have sued the owner of Fireworks North — the group that held the fireworks display at the Venetian Festival — three crew members, the City of Charlevoix, the Charlevoix Area Chamber of Commerce and various public officials, including the city manager and the police and fire chiefs, the Traverse City Record Eagle reported. As a result of the accident and its aftermath, Charlevoix will not hold any fireworks this year.
In lieu of the Glen Arbor Fire Department’s reasonable inability to follow NFPA safety standards, DePuy claims it had decided last summer not to put on fireworks this year, even before the Charlevoix tragedy. “The biggest reason our fire department can’t do it is public safety,” he said. “What happened in Charlevoix was just the frosting on the cake. We had already made up our minds before that.”
Actually, fireworks displays put on by the Glen Arbor Fire Department have not been completely trouble free. During the middle of the show ?? seven ?? years ago a launching box blew up as it was about to be sent into the sky. Local photographer Ken Scott took a picture of the explosion and, though no one was injured, the photo is framed and hanging on the wall of De Puy’s office today — a subtle reminder that the tragedy in Charlevoix could just as easily have happened in Glen Arbor.