Following an explosive New Year’s Eve, a bill that was rolled over from 2023’s legislative session could create a shipping container inspection program for illegal fireworks if it is passes this year.
State Sen. Karl Rhoads (D, Nuuanu-Downtown-Iwilei) in 2023 introduced Senate Bill 37, which would establish a shipping container inspection program to randomly check for “illegal fireworks and explosives.” Along with the companion House bill (HB 809), it was carried over for discussion during this year’s legislative session, which will begin Jan. 17.
The Senate bill was referred to three committees — Senate Transportation and Culture and the Arts, Public Safety and Intergovernmental and Military Affairs, and Ways and Means — but never received a hearing.
Instead, was signed into law and created the Illegal Fireworks Task Force, operated by the state Department of Law Enforcement. The interagency task force comprises state narcotics agents, deputy sheriffs, county police officers, the Department of the Attorney General and federal agencies including Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The task force since its establishment in July confiscated nearly, mainly through seizures of shipping containers from the mainland at Honolulu Harbor. The task force also has seized illegal fireworks via air cargo and monitors postal mail and common carrier shipments.
In addition, the task force held a fireworks amnesty day in mid-December, when the public could turn in contraband fireworks, no questions asked. That effort reaped 515 pounds of illegal fireworks. A tip line for the public to provide anonymous information about illegal fireworks traffickers and dealers is also active.
But booming rockets and explosive aerials still lit up the sky on New Year’s Eve. The Honolulu Fire Department responded to 23 fireworks-related incidents on Oahu this year, a nearly 190% increase from last year. The Honolulu Emergency Services Department responded to eight fireworks-related incidents, six of which were severe. Victims included three children.
“My understanding was it looked just as bad as it ever does,” Rhoads, who was off island this New Year’s Eve, said about the night. “I think that there’s still going to be pressure on us to continue to do something on fireworks. Whether that just means putting more money into it and allowing the current task force to continue and expand or actually passing a bill, I don’t know.”
Rhoads said that while the task force has been a success, the amount of illegal fireworks still being used indicates the sheer volume of illegal fireworks entering the state.
“The fact that they confiscated (105,000 pounds of illegal fireworks) and there was no appreciable difference, that says to me there’s a lot of illegal fireworks coming in,” Rhoads said. “What I fear is that it has become like illegal drugs where there’s so much demand for it that it’s almost impossible to interdict it all because there’s just too much money to be made.”
Rhoads said the demand, coupled with the already tricky process of passing bills generally, makes implementing laws regulating illegal fireworks “more difficult.”
“If there’s that many people in Hawaii who want to get illegal fireworks, there’s going to be a market for it because there’s just too much money to be made for someone not to supply it,” Rhoads said. “(The task force) is obviously being successful, so let’s help them be more successful. If we add on a random-check program like what I’m suggesting, that doesn’t hurt anything.”
The carried-over bill would develop and implement a program to randomly inspect shipping containers arriving in the state for illegal fireworks and explosives. The program would utilize explosive-sniffing dogs and would prioritize “high-risk containers over low-risk containers,” with low-risk containers referring to those delivered to the military, state or county agencies and companies doing business in the state that are determined to be in good standing by the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. The program would be coordinated by the Department of Law Enforcement.
Since introducing the bill in 2023, Rhoads said more ideas have been brought to his attention, including looking at discrepancies between the documents and actual contents of shipping containers.
“We’re kind of in the ‘all of the above’ stage,” Rhoads said. “We’re going to have to do more of everything and do new things as well.”
Senate Bill 251, which would require county police departments to “purchase and deploy explosion detection technology” to locate and respond to illegal firearms and fireworks, was also carried over to this year’s session after being introduced in 2023.
Other bills related to illegal fireworks died during 2023’s legislative sessions, including bills that would have established police fireworks enforcement units or increased fines on those who allow the use of aerial fireworks on their property.
“It’s not a simple problem. There’s multiple ways fireworks can come into the state, so you have to deal with all of the shipping modes, and there’s a lot of different agencies involved,” Rhoads said. “If it were an easy problem, someone would have solved it a long time ago.”
