There are few restrictions on when and where you can use consumer fireworks in Georgia.
Fireworks can be shot between 10 a.m. and midnight most days of the year. The hours are extended to 2 a.m. on July 3 and 4, and New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day.
Fireworks can’t be shot within 100 yards of a gas station, fuel-related industries such as a refinery, or a nuclear power facility.
Only people 18 years old and older can buy fireworks in Georgia.
Nonexplosive sparkling fireworks and hand-held sparklers have been legal in the state since 2005, but House Bill 110 legalized consumer fireworks such as firecrackers, Roman candles, bottle rockets and mortars, as of July 1.
The head of one major fireworks company has plans to open three stores immediately and said Georgia is bound to be an explosive market.
“The time has come, ” said Bill Weimer, the vice president of Ohio-based Phantom Fireworks, which has applied to open stores in Buford, Morrow and Duluth.
“We have always thought Georgia was a good market, ” Weimer said. Because fireworks sales were legal in almost every state bordering Georgia, he said, “it was sort of silly Georgia wasn’t.”
Anyone who wants to sell fireworks in the state has to get a permit from the state Office of Insurance and Safety Fire Commissioner. Office spokeswoman Laura Wright said it had received 537 applications as of Friday. Forty have been approved.
Wright said her colleagues are confident many more will be confirmed by the end of this month.
“All the applications are being reviewed, ” she said. “For some cases, we’re waiting on the applicants to submit the required documents. If it takes the applicant a while to submit the documents, they may not make the July 1 schedule.”
For fireworks novices, the sudden access to the vast array of available products could be daunting. Phantom Fireworks has a 38-page catalog featuring hundreds, if not thousands, of products with prices as low as $3.99 for the Artificial Satellite that spins upward and shoots sparks and as high as $1,499 for the Grounds for Divorce Assortment.
Brian Hammock, an Atlanta fireworks expert, suggested fireworks newbies check out the mortar shells.
“Those are the ones you drop down into tubes, ” said Hammock, a licensed pyrotechnician with East Coast Pyrotechnics. “Those are a little bit safer. They give you time to get away from them.”
Hammock, who helps orchestrate fireworks displays at Turner Field, has more advice for anyone planning their first fireworks foray.
“Try to stay sober, ” he said, “and it sounds silly, but always read the instructions. I’ve seen people light Roman candles on the wrong end.”
