Historic wildfire season, drought causing Nebraska cities and counties to ban fireworks

A recurring agenda item is landing on western Nebraska city and county meeting agendas this month: consideration of banning fireworks ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.

Officials across western Nebraska are making the deliberations as drought conditions continued to deteriorate in this week’s latest U.S. Drought Monitor map from the National Drought Mitigation Center.

Seven percent of the state, all of which is in Nebraska’s Panhandle, is now in D4 or “exceptional” drought – the worst classification. Central Nebraska is not faring much better, with much of the central region facing severe or extreme drought. Conditions have greatly improved in the eastern part of the state, with much of the area seeing only abnormally dry conditions or no signs of drought.

Just in the past week the following governing bodies have also implemented varying fireworks bans: the city of Alliance, the city of Chadron, Kimball County, the Village of Potter, the Village of Hemingford, the Village of Harrison and Box Butte County.

Scotts Bluff County was one of the first local government bodies to consider the banning of fireworks, but officials only weighed the option for rural parts of Scotts Bluff County. Commissioners made it clear in their June 1 meeting that many eyes were on them to see how they would handle discussions about whether the risk of the current historic wildfire season and exceptional drought levels outweighed the public’s right to light off explosives for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.

At the time, commissioners said it was a challenging conversation for public officials. But just a week later, the South Fork Fire ignited near Nebraska’s largest state park and threatened to burn the park’s historic grounds. The nearly 40,000-acre wildfire is now mostly under control, but it added to an already historic year of wildfire devastation and drought.

This year’s wildfire season started early in March, when two massive wildfires tore through two different areas in western Nebraska. That area of the state had just finished off its warmest and driest winter on record and set it up for drought expansion.

Scotts Bluff Commissioners initially voted June 1 to draft a resolution to ban fireworks in rural areas of the county, but in a surprise reconsideration this week, commissioners reversed the decision and didn’t institute the ban. Other city, county and village entities are choosing to either shorten the timeframe in which fireworks can be lit off this year or banning the sale and usage of fireworks altogether.

In a meeting earlier this week, Chadron Fire Chief Branden Martens said his crews are working around the clock to put out fires that keep igniting – many of which are being caused by dry lightning.

“I know last council [meeting], we talked about doing the 3rd and the 4th for the 10 a.m. to midnight approval and then allow the sale during the full term,” Martens said. “Obviously, some events have changed in the last week. Things have happened just west of us. Currently, we have the county’s support in shutting the burn ban down – no fireworks allowed in there. Sioux County is going to do the same thing, so our neighbors are doing the same things. It would be easier on my end – and unfortunately, it’s not what the vendors would like to hear – if we would just be done with fireworks for this year.”

He acknowledged that only a few fires typically ignite from fireworks each year, but he said with resources stretched so thin, any extra calls can add to the workload.

“The fire that happened in the Crawford area – that was one lightning bolt that hit a post and then knocked the staples out and had multiple starts after that one lightning bolt, and that’s why it took off so fast. We’ve seen what one start can do,” Martens said.