Camas bans mortar fireworks

Camas officials have officially banned the sale, purchase and discharge of mortar-style fireworks. 

Following a two-hour public hearing Tuesday evening that drew nearly 20 comments from members of the public on both sides of the personal fireworks debate, Camas City Council officials voted 4-3 in favor of the mortar ban. Councilmembers Marilyn Boerke, Leslie Lewallen and Jennifer Senescu voted against the ban. 

The new ordinance will not go into effect for one year and will not impact the two holidays — New Year’s Eve and the Fourth of July — when Camas residents are legally able to discharge personal fireworks until Dec. 31, 2025, and July 4, 2026. 

Councilmember Tim Hein, who worked on the Council’s fireworks subcommittee with Councilmember John Nohr and former Councilmember Don Chaney, said the issue of personal fireworks is one of the biggest topics among his constituents and that the mortar ban, which bans the sale, purchase and discharge of aerial fireworks with reloadable tubes commonly referred to as “mortars,” but does not include a ban on other aerial fireworks such as “cakes” or “Roman candles,” was a compromise on the Council’s part.
The fireworks subcommittee, Hein said Tuesday, “tried to understand what both sides want.”
“The legislation this evening is an attempt to compromise and maybe tone it down a bit,” Hein said. “This ordinance will only be as good as everyone in the community believes it to be.”

The Council has heard from hundreds of Camas citizens over the past few years — through its online outreach on the City’s Engage Camas website as well as during in-person Council meetings and workshops — about the CIty’s rules regarding personal fireworks. And while fireworks supporters point to state laws that allow a wide range of personal fireworks and are more permissive than Camas when it comes to the number of days these fireworks are allowed to be sold, purchased and discharged. The supporters have also argued that allowing personal fireworks in Camas is a tradition enjoyed by many neighborhood groups and something that helps local high schools continue to host alcohol- and drug-free end-of-the-year parties for graduating seniors thanks to the annual $5,000 donations from Mean Gene’s Fireworks stands. 

Opponents, however, say the risk of allowing personal fireworks far outweighs any benefits. 

“It’s like a war zone on top of Prune Hill on the Fourth of July,” one person who spoke in favor of the mortar ban told Council members Tuesday. “We dread the holiday and would leave, but are worried our house or landscaping could be set on fire. As a Humane Society volunteer, I have seen lost and terrorized dogs that arrive every year. … It is time to stop this nonsense. Cities need to consider public options like drone displays that are gentler.” 

Other speakers talked about the fireworks’ fire risks, impact on veterans suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), wildlife, pets and the environment. 

“This is an issue of public safety,” Ellen Burton, a former Camas City Council member, former Camas mayor and current president of the Camas Parks and Recreation Commission told Council members during the Tuesday public hearing. “We’re investing millions of dollars to clean up our lakes and water supply, but allowing fireworks to continue to allow risks to our water, environment and … our health.” 

Camas-Washougal Fire Chief Cliff Free said Tuesday that the 2024 Fourth of July holiday was the first year in nearly 20 years, excluding 2019, when the City banned the use of personal fireworks due to extreme fire-risk conditions, that local first responders have not had to transport someone to the hospital due to a fireworks-related injury. 

“Until this year, for the past 18 years, we have had somebody significantly burned or a digit lost or that required transport to the hospital via ambulance,” Free told the Council on Tuesday. “We have also had some sort of fire (every year) that caused significant fire damage. … A year ago, there was a structure fire at 4:30 in the morning from an ember in bark dust that traveled to the back porch and then traveled to the house. Who started that fire? I don’t know. … Who knows? Everybody is shooting off fireworks. We’re busy all night. We had seven fires (over the past Fourth of July holiday) … that would have gotten a lot worse had we not, or homeowners not, caught them and put them out.” 

Free said “there are always going to be risks” connected to personal fireworks, adding that there are more risks when people shoot off aerial fireworks that cannot be controlled once they’re in the air. 

“One thing about the mortar (ban) is that those are the loudest bang in town,” Free said, adding that banning mortars would help reduce the two most common complaints — the noise and the fire risk associated with the larger aerial fireworks. 

Some speakers Tuesday night, including a representative of TNT Fireworks and the owner of Mean Gene’s Fireworks stands, told Council members that banning just one type of fireworks could be more difficult than Camas officials may have realized, given that many fireworks manufacturers in China tend to bundle mortar fireworks together with fireworks like Roman candles and other aerial fireworks that will still be allowed inside the CIty limits. 

Some Council members seemed to believe banning mortars would be banning all aerial fireworks and Councilman John Svilarich, who made the motion to approve the mortar ban, asked the CIty’s attorney if it would be possible to amend the ordinance to include other aerial-style fireworks. 

“When we were talking about mortars, I thought they were all lumped in there,” Svilarich said. 

The City’s attorney, Shawn MacPherson, said the Council needed to keep the original language related to aerial shells with reloadable tubes since that was the basis of the public hearing. 

“That was part of the public’s expectation for a public hearing,” MacPherson said. 

“We didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Svilarich said, adding that the Council can always “go back and revisit” the fireworks ordinance in the future. 

Hein, who proposed the mortar ban earlier this year, said he hoped the new ordinance would allow Camas residents who opposed fireworks to have greater leverage when discussing the issue with neighbors who were shooting off fireworks on the Fourth of July or New Year’s Eve, to say about mortars, beginning after September 2025, that “these are not allowed.” 

But Councilmember Bonnie Carter pointed out that even the Port of Camas-Washougal has canceled its annual Fourth of July fireworks show on the Washougal waterfront after participants became aggressive toward Boy Scouts directing parking traffic during the July 2023 fireworks show. 

“The disrespect the Boy Scouts received at the last show they put on was outrageous,” Carter said. “So when we talk about respecting neighbors and you can’t be respectful to Boy Scouts? That’s concerning.”
Carter, who said she has been working with constituents to address the fireworks debate for the past decade, said she agreed with Hein that accountability for personal fireworks “is impossible once that mortar is in the air,” and agreed with Councilmember Jennifer Senescu, who said she believed those who wished for a personal fireworks ban should take the issue up with their state legislators since Washington state still allows the sale, purchase and discharge of a wide range of personal fireworks.

“One of the things I want to put out there — as Camas has become surrounded by cities (including Vancouver, Washougal and Portland) that restrict fireworks, we have become a destination for those that set off fireworks,” Carter said. “And that is a huge risk.”