EDITORIAL
Fireworks: Argument for a ban gains force
The good news about fireworks last New Year's Eve is that there were no fatalities, no major fires. We haven't been so lucky in other years.
Advertiser library photo
But there's always a healthy helping of bad news when it comes to a night of unrestrained fireworks use: breathing difficulties from the pall of smoke, freaked-out pets, a range of fires mainly in the nuisance range.
Fireworks not only can cause injuries, but choking smoke and noise are harmful to people and pets.
And then there's 11-year-old Cydnee Somera. If you're one of the many O'ahu residents who insist that fireworks on New Year's are culturally and spiritually indispensible, we hope you lingered over the story and picture on Friday's front page, detailing the painful injury she suffered to her hand when someone set off an IED — an improvised explosive devise, as they are being called in Iraq.
Her hand was struck by what in effect was flying shrapnel. After three surgeries, her hand still aches. Doctors aren't sure to what extent she'll recover use of it.
We at The Advertiser have preferred a total ban on fireworks. An Advertiser poll not too long ago showed Hawai'i residents about evenly divided on a ban.
But Cydnee's situation suggests that proponents of fireworks are being a bit selfish, clinging to an entertainment that always harms some of their neighbors who truly suffer from the noise and smoke. Sometimes the harm is even irreversible.
We're mindful of the importance of fireworks to its proponents. But in an ever more crowded urban Honolulu, that importance is increasingly outweighed by its costs.
