Fireworks Customers Change Spending Habits

Our dry conditions have kept fireworks sales a little more grounded this year.
  
Thursday is the final day South Dakota residents can purchase fireworks. And fire-conscious customers aren't setting their sights so high this dry summer.

The fireworks frenzy doesn't fizzle just because it's no longer the Fourth of July.

"We like the big diamonds in the sky, a little color and a big boom in the middle," fireworks customer Mark Williams said.

But customers at Hot Shot Fireworks have been buying more ground-based fireworks like firecrackers and sparklers than the airborne ones like bottle rockets.  Customers think that's the safer option this dry summer.

"It's a different year than last year.  The items that they've been buying have been a little bit different; a little bit stay low to the ground, not so much in the air," Hot Shot Fireworks owner Shelly Raderschadt said.

The aerial fireworks cost more than the ones that blow up on the ground.  But Hot Shot Fireworks doesn't think customers' preference to lay low will hurt overall sales.

"A lot of them come in and buy the things that they really liked, and sometimes just some snaps and sparklers just to hold them through," Raderschadt said.

Customers who are buying the rocket-launched fireworks say they shoot them off over lakes and not in dry fields where they might otherwise spark a fire.

"We don't shoot them over a wheat field or anything like that," Williams said.

"We're not out to set anything on fire.  Fireworks represent America.  You just gotta go with it; it's once a year," customer Sherri Williams said.

Patriotism fused with pyrotechnic precautions in the midst of a very dry summer.

South Dakota fireworks stands can sell to out-of-state customers through August.