ALLENTOWN, Pa. – With names like the Roaring Twenties, Survivor and Diablo, buying the boom is a nearly 3-billion-dollar-a-year industry for purveyors of pyrotechnics.
“Today is the big one,” said Ralph Uldanetta of Phantom Fireworks on MacArthur Road.
He says New Year’s Eve sales are only a fraction of 4th of July’s. However, for Lehigh County’s Bill Lyons, it’s his explosive end of the year celebration.
“We’re gonna do some at eight o’clock, and then we’re gonna go back out for midnight if everyone’s still awake,” Lyons said.
Entertainment for some, sensory encroachment for others, exploding right outside Donna Shull’s ground floor west end Allentown apartment.
“It sounds like a bomb going off,” said Shull. “They throw then right down at the bottom of my window.”
The 77-year-old expects fireworks well past 1 a.m. on New Year’s Eve.
“What do you do when you hear it?” I asked her.
“Just get scared,” she said, along with her two cats, who she says feel the same.
Personal fireworks in Pennsylvania became legal in 2017 and remain a hot topic in Harrisburg.
“People are not making wise decisions in terms of detonating these devices,” State Senator Judy Schwank said in a 2021 hearing on regulating fireworks.
State law says you have to be 18 to buy, fireworks can’t be ignited or discharged on public or private property without permission, and not within 150 feet of a building or vehicle.
Fines can hit a thousand bucks and include jail time. However, police have said it’s difficult to catch people in the act.
“Fireworks are dangerous, but we want to make sure that we’re selling them to people and they’re going to use them responsibly,” said Uldanetta.
He added that Phantom registers all customers, with a safety sheet included.
“Your biggest piece of advice for anyone buying fireworks setting them off would be what?” I asked.
” Do it sober, do it sober,” he said.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission estimates more than 14,000 Americans were injured by fireworks in 2024.