Vancouver to celebrate first Halloween with fireworks ban

It’s likely to be a quieter Halloween night in Vancouver this year, with a fireworks ban including fire patrols and $1,000 fines in force.

Halloween is usually one of the busiest nights of the year for police, fire crews, and paramedics across the region. Vancouver Assistant Fire Chief Dave Meers says last Halloween brought around $400,000 in fire damage to the city, with most of it attributed to fireworks.

This year, not only are they mostly banned, but fines for breaking the fireworks bylaws have doubled.

“If you sell, possess, or discharge fireworks without a permit, that’s a $1,000 fine now. It used to be $500. If you point a firework at any person, animal, building, or thing, that’s $1,000,” he said. “We’re hoping that now because of the fireworks ban instances of fire loss and fireworks discharges and fire-related damages are going to go down.”

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With the ban in place, there were noticeably fewer fireworks shops across the region in the days leading up to Halloween.

“We still have enforcement activities occurring for Halloween night, but this is a little bit different because we’re not inspecting the vendors who would have been selling them in previous years, but we will have two officers who are patrolling … to seize unlawful fireworks from people setting them off,” Meers said.

Those officers are generally fire inspectors, whereas fire halls conduct community safety checks in their district. Every fire hall will have a truck monitoring parks and schoolyards.

“This year is a test year. We’re going to look at the statistics,” said Meers. “We’re all really hopeful that this is going to show a decrease in fire activity.”

There’s still a chance people will buy and set off fireworks illegally, he warns residents.