Fireworks complaint hotline lights up on July 4 — a breakdown of Sacramento calls, citations

Were you kept up late into night Sunday from the sound of the Fourth of July? Don’t worry, so was the rest of Sacramento.

The Sacramento Fire Department received 1,500 complaints about illegal firework use on the night of July 4 alone. Residents called in complaints to a Sacramento fireworks hotline number, run by the fire department, and submitted them through the new Nail ’Em app.

Sacramento Fire Department spokesman Capt. Keith Wade told The Sacramento Bee that the complaints were spread out evenly throughout the Sacramento area. The hotline also received calls from residents in Los Angeles and cities out of state, who Wade thinks must have stumbled upon the hotline number while searching online.

Fire Department officials issued 76 citations for illegal firework use on Sunday night, most of which carried a fine of $1,000. Officials issued around $200,000 in fines in the ten days leading up to the holiday.

This is the first year that the fire department had a concentrated hotline and an app to field complaints, so it is unclear whether this year’s complaints outnumbered last year’s complaints. Over half of all complaints were submitted through the app.

The Sacramento Police Department has also fielded fireworks complaints in the past. They have not yet released information regarding the number of complaints they received this weekend.

The Fire Department received 400 911 calls for service Sunday night, compared to 150 calls the department fields on a typical night. The increase was almost certainly due to firework use, Wade said.

“The Fourth of July is our busiest call volume day, always,” Wade said. “The fire activity is just through the roof.”

The department fielded slightly more 911 calls than they did on the Fourth in 2020. Still, the increase in call volume was very slight compared to what some predicted to be a major increase given the state of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to last year.

The department received 84 fire calls in addition to the 911 calls, 27 fewer than they did in 2020.

As of July 6, the department is attributing 11 fires on the night of July 4 to firework use.

Wade said that high humidity and low wind levels made the conditions slightly safer on Sunday. Still, the department responded to large numbers of vegetation fires, with reports spread evenly across the Sacramento area.

A number of fires affected homes in the Sacramento area, including one at the 3700 block of Knightlinger Street that the department tentatively attributed to improper disposal of legal fireworks. Nobody was injured in that incident.

This story was originally published July 5, 2021 at 3:46 PM.