Letter: People bring fireworks to the island

Published 1:30 am Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Editor.

The Fourth of July is coming quickly, and we just had hottest weekend yet this summer. I’m noticing how things are drying out and having trouble keeping up with the watering in our garden. We have been discussing whether we are getting so hot and dry, that we need to look at how much and what kind of fireworks we should be having in our island community.

This was brought home to me in the last couple years, when we have had fires, blazing towards our highway, on our road last year there was a brush fire in a field a hundred yards away from ours and our neighbor’s homes. Some of those people have limited mobility and would have had trouble evacuating. if necessary. The event I saw last year was an island off of Greece, where vacationers had to run along beaches, to try and find a boat to evacuate them.

How would we evacuate our communities, or island if we had a serious wild fire?

Yes, having visitors come to our island, so they can blow up and fire off all those fireworks that are illegal where they actually live most of their lives, does help our economy when they spend their money, but last year cars loaded with fireworks on the ferry were stopped by the State Patrol from bringing them across on the ferry, for good safety reasons.

Maybe we need to have a real community dialogue about why we continue to allow these visitors to come here and do this?

Maybe we need to have a vote after that meeting to see if we want to continue doing this?

Jerry Hill

Freeland