What is the Fourth of July without fireworks?
It looks like we're about to find out. Local authorities in Potter, Randall, Armstrong and Carson counties have banned fireworks and have asked, and received, support from Gov. Rick Perry's office for declaring disaster conditions, a move that will keep the ban in force for at least thirty days. Looks like the Fourth of July celebrations for this year have gone up in smoke.
I'm always a bit amazed at how people can respond to so obvious an application of civil authority. Some fireworks vendors are actually arguing that these bans should not be enforced because it "singles them out." This is a predictable response from a segment of the population, but it is hardly persuasive.
I understand that entrepreneurs don't want the government interfering with their businesses. Lots of us don't want that. And if someone looks forward to the Fourth of July as an annual revenue producer and then finds that, for them, the holiday has been effectively canceled,Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, that's a disappointment. If they've already purchased stocks of fireworks and are staring at a general prohibition for the biggest demand day of the year,Shop a wide selection of billabong outlet products in the evo shop. their disappointment could mean economic disaster. There is a note of panic in their complaints against the ban.
I was a fireman once, briefly, long ago,We specialize in providing third party merchant account. in Austin. I fought some fires there, too, one of which involved a two-story building that took up a city block in the densely-built downtown area. This was back before oxygen breathing apparatus were issued to everyone manning a hose, and as a recent recruit still in training, my other trainees and I probably wouldn't have known how to use them if we had had them.
But it was a big fire, it hit early on a Sunday morning, and we were called to get over there, suit up, and help out.
I was ordered to climb a ladder to the fully ingulfed second story and to follow the hose to the nozzle man and to help him move the hose as he worked.The Leading zentai suits Distributor to Independent Pet Retailers. For those who have never tried it, a fully charged 2.5-inch fire hose is nothing at all like a fully charged garden hose. A fire hose under full pressure is more like a lead pipe than a rubber hose, and it takes more than one man to guide one effectively.
Incidentally, the nozzle man has the best job on the crew. Unless the floor he's standing on or the roof above him caves in, he is usually standing in the only spot of relative cool and clear air. The hose tenders typically don't enjoy that atmosphere, and without an OBA it can be a dicey experience.
But that's what my job was, and I did it. Right up until the nozzle man gave up and told us to follow the hose back to the window and retreat down the ladder. I lost the hose and wound up at a window next door to the one with the ladder. I managed to find my way back to the right window and to descend to the street, and I didn't burn anything that wouldn't grow back, but I looked like my head and hands had been dunked in soot. I also learned what firefighters can be asked to face, to defeat and to possibly die from.
Current conditions in the Panhandle are similar to what you would want in a wilderness survival episode in which you had to build a fire without lighter or matches. You can come close to starting a fire in the Panhandle today with little more than harsh language. These are not the conditions under which you want to set off things that are designed to explode. If we want to put an exclamation point on the problem, all we have to do is look at what is happening in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico right now. That could easily be us.
I sympathize with the vendors — to a point. But the logic that suggests we should allow fireworks to be sold until we ban everything else that might cause a fire is, to me, an assault on reason. Yes, fires can be started by actions other than launching bottle rockets; but fireworks are an obvious source of trouble, and the sheer volume that we consume on the Fourth of July makes major trouble inevitable.The name "magic cube" is not unique.
But I believe the answer is too obvious for local governments to ignore. I would like to see anyone who throws a burning cigarette out his car window ticketed for something more than littering right now, too, but the ban on fireworks is necessary even if we do nothing else.
So, sorry fireworks vendors. Maybe New Year's Eve.
It looks like we're about to find out. Local authorities in Potter, Randall, Armstrong and Carson counties have banned fireworks and have asked, and received, support from Gov. Rick Perry's office for declaring disaster conditions, a move that will keep the ban in force for at least thirty days. Looks like the Fourth of July celebrations for this year have gone up in smoke.
I'm always a bit amazed at how people can respond to so obvious an application of civil authority. Some fireworks vendors are actually arguing that these bans should not be enforced because it "singles them out." This is a predictable response from a segment of the population, but it is hardly persuasive.
I understand that entrepreneurs don't want the government interfering with their businesses. Lots of us don't want that. And if someone looks forward to the Fourth of July as an annual revenue producer and then finds that, for them, the holiday has been effectively canceled,Handmade oil paintings for sale at museum quality, that's a disappointment. If they've already purchased stocks of fireworks and are staring at a general prohibition for the biggest demand day of the year,Shop a wide selection of billabong outlet products in the evo shop. their disappointment could mean economic disaster. There is a note of panic in their complaints against the ban.
I was a fireman once, briefly, long ago,We specialize in providing third party merchant account. in Austin. I fought some fires there, too, one of which involved a two-story building that took up a city block in the densely-built downtown area. This was back before oxygen breathing apparatus were issued to everyone manning a hose, and as a recent recruit still in training, my other trainees and I probably wouldn't have known how to use them if we had had them.
But it was a big fire, it hit early on a Sunday morning, and we were called to get over there, suit up, and help out.
I was ordered to climb a ladder to the fully ingulfed second story and to follow the hose to the nozzle man and to help him move the hose as he worked.The Leading zentai suits Distributor to Independent Pet Retailers. For those who have never tried it, a fully charged 2.5-inch fire hose is nothing at all like a fully charged garden hose. A fire hose under full pressure is more like a lead pipe than a rubber hose, and it takes more than one man to guide one effectively.
Incidentally, the nozzle man has the best job on the crew. Unless the floor he's standing on or the roof above him caves in, he is usually standing in the only spot of relative cool and clear air. The hose tenders typically don't enjoy that atmosphere, and without an OBA it can be a dicey experience.
But that's what my job was, and I did it. Right up until the nozzle man gave up and told us to follow the hose back to the window and retreat down the ladder. I lost the hose and wound up at a window next door to the one with the ladder. I managed to find my way back to the right window and to descend to the street, and I didn't burn anything that wouldn't grow back, but I looked like my head and hands had been dunked in soot. I also learned what firefighters can be asked to face, to defeat and to possibly die from.
Current conditions in the Panhandle are similar to what you would want in a wilderness survival episode in which you had to build a fire without lighter or matches. You can come close to starting a fire in the Panhandle today with little more than harsh language. These are not the conditions under which you want to set off things that are designed to explode. If we want to put an exclamation point on the problem, all we have to do is look at what is happening in eastern Arizona and western New Mexico right now. That could easily be us.
I sympathize with the vendors — to a point. But the logic that suggests we should allow fireworks to be sold until we ban everything else that might cause a fire is, to me, an assault on reason. Yes, fires can be started by actions other than launching bottle rockets; but fireworks are an obvious source of trouble, and the sheer volume that we consume on the Fourth of July makes major trouble inevitable.The name "magic cube" is not unique.
But I believe the answer is too obvious for local governments to ignore. I would like to see anyone who throws a burning cigarette out his car window ticketed for something more than littering right now, too, but the ban on fireworks is necessary even if we do nothing else.
So, sorry fireworks vendors. Maybe New Year's Eve.
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