Authorities Urge Residents to Enjoy Fourth of July Responsibly

BY ROGER BROWN
BRISTOL HERALD COURIER

Ribs and hot dogs will be grilled, family and friends will gather and there’ll be lots of loud bangs and lights this weekend as Mountain Empire residents celebrate Independence Day. But local authorities urge that safety – especially involving children – not be lost amid the red, white and blue blast.

‘The No. 1 message we’re trying to hammer home [throughout the holiday weekend] is, ‘Watch out for the children,’” Bristol Tennessee Assistant Fire Chief Jack Spurgeon Jr. said Tuesday. “Adults need to make sure that if there are fireworks going off, the children around are just spectators, and not the ones setting them off.”

Gregg O’Donnell, a spokesman for the Virginia Department of Forestry, said fire is another concern.

While Bristol has recently seen a lot of rain, many area lawns probably still have dry spots that could spark a fire from stray fireworks and sparklers, ODonnell said.

“We’re really urging people who are [legally] using fireworks and sparklers to do it on asphalt, gravel or paved driveways,” O’Donnell said.

Meanwhile, Sullivan County Sheriff’s Capt. Keith Elton and 1st Sgt. Greg Hogston of the Washington County, Va., Sheriff’s Office, offered residents more reasons to be exercise caution this weekend.

Elton said his department will lend off-duty officers to the Tennessee Highway Patrol this weekend, to help the detect impaired drivers.

Hogston said his department will take a number of holiday-related steps, including more patrols around Bristol, Va., South Holston Lake and state Routes 75, 19 and 81.

“We’re going to be highly mobilized in a lot of areas,” Hogston said. “We’ll be highly [visible] in numerous traffic spots.”

The AAA’s Mid-Atlantic and East Tennessee offices predict that about 1 million Virginians and 857,000 Tennessee residents will make trips of 50 miles or more during the holiday weekend. That’s a 1.8 percent drop in the number of Virginia residents who traveled last July 4, and a 4 percent decrease in Tennessee travelers from 2008.

AAA East Tennessee spokesman Don Lindsey said the slow national economy will surely affect local travel, but he pointed out that current gas prices remain dramatically lower than a year ago.

“If people can travel at all, boy, now’s the year,”  Lindsey said. “We’re talking gas prices that are more than $1 lower than last year.”

Lindsey noted that in the Tri-Cities, a gallon of unleaded gas currently costs $2.39 to $2.48, compared to $3.92 to $3.97 at this time last year.

Some other holiday-related tidbits:

* Since 2004, nearly 25 percent of all Virginia fires involving fireworks happened during the Fourth of July holiday period, according to the Virginia Fire Incident Reporting System.
* The national office of the Humane Society strongly urges pet owners to avoid taking their animals to fireworks displays over the holiday because loud noises easily frighten and unsettle pets.
* Tennessee officials said that from midnight today through 6 a.m. Monday, the state will suspend any interstate construction that would cause lanes to be closed. That time frame is considered the peak July 4 holiday period by the state. 
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