‘It’s Out Of Hand’: Fireworks Amnesty Event Collects Scores Of Unused Explosives
In response to the deadly New Year’s Eve explosion, the state Department of Law Enforcement said it collected more than 500 pounds of illegal fireworks.
Dozens of boxes of aerial cakes with names like “Dead Heat,” “Dragon Duel” and “Naval Combat” lined a table outside Aloha Stadium on Saturday where law enforcement officials were collecting unused illegal fireworks — no questions asked.
The Department of Law Enforcement organized the amnesty event in response to the deadly New Year’s Eve fireworks explosion in Salt Lake that claimed the lives of four people and seriously injured more than 20. A 20-year-old man also died in a separate fireworks incident in Kalihi.
A steady stream of cars drove through a parking lot below Aloha Stadium marked with caution tape and drivers popped their trunks. Law enforcement officials, wearing bright yellow vests, carried bags and boxes of unused explosives to a nearby table so they could be weighed, inventoried and prepared to be hauled off to a secure storage facility.
By midday, authorities had already collected more than 500 pounds of pyrotechnics, surpassing the total collected during a similar event in December 2023, according to Brooks Baehr, spokesman for the Department of Law Enforcement. The total amount collected will be announced Monday, he said.
Some of the explosives dropped off were semi-professional aerial shells like the ones used for weekly displays at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, said Cpl. Jeff Llacuna of the Honolulu Police Department bomb squad, as he held up a small bag of the shells.
“Every year it gets worse,” he said.
Authorities also collected a 198-shot Roman candle and multiple large mortar shell tubes.
Just looking at the sky on New Year’s Eve, Llacuna said, he can tell that the intensity of the fireworks being used by civilians has increased.
“It’s out of hand,” he said. “You drive down the freeway and it’s like a Hilton show.”
Cody Yonamine, 37, who lives in Kaimuki, dropped off some ground bloom fireworks Saturday that had been lying around for years. The fireworks spin and shoot sparks into the air when lit. He said after seeing what happened in Salt Lake, he wanted to get rid of them safely and encourage other people to do the same.
“I probably won’t ever do fireworks again in my lifetime,” he said. “Especially when people lose their lives like that, it’s really devastating.”
Melody Kawai of Wahiawa also stopped by on Saturday to drop off firecrackers she’d had for years. Her Shih Tzu-Lhasa Apso mix Barney was in the back seat.
“It’s hard on the animals,” she said of fireworks noise on New Year’s Eve and other holidays.
She said she also feels that every year the displays get louder and more intense. She wants to see law enforcement start giving harsher penalties to people who buy and use illegal fireworks.
The New Year’s Eve incident in Salt Lake has spurred calls for a tighter crackdown on the use of pyrotechnics, which are already illegal but still commonly used throughout Hawaii. Department of Law Enforcement Director Jordan Lowe told lawmakers this week that fireworks come into the state on passenger airplanes, via U.S. Postal Service packages, almost daily.
Llacuna said many people get fireworks online from states where they are legal to buy, such as Arizona and Nevada, and mail them to Hawaii.
But conditions become especially dangerous when people stockpile boxes of the explosives in their homes, he said. Fireworks can also deteriorate over time, making them more volatile and possible to set off with friction or if a box is dropped.
“If it blew up in the house, it would kill everyone in the house, and possibly the neighbors,” he said.
The fireworks collected during Saturday’s event will be stored in a “remote facility” until the Department of Law Enforcement decides how to dispose of them, said Lowe. He declined to say where the storage facility is located.
There are three options for disposal, he said. They can be lit and set off, soaked in chemicals and burned or countercharged and blown up in a controlled explosion.
Lowe said the department is working on creating a process where unused fireworks can be turned in to law enforcement at any time throughout the year, and he warned people never to throw their fireworks in the trash or in a dumpster.
Residents can also report illegal fireworks activity to the department’s anonymous tip line at 808-517-2182 or through the .
