Wellman firefighters may step back from fireworks

For as long as anyone in the Wellman Fire Department can remember, the town’s firefighters have staged a fireworks show every Fourth of July.

2021’s show may be the last.

Wellman Fire Chief Jeremy Peck said firefighters face increasing demands on their time — from state regulations, mandated training and more service calls.

“Due to the increase in hours that volunteers give, it’s just a lot of extra work that I don’t think has been there in the past,” he said. “We’re doing more and more and more, and it just gets to the point of ‘where does the time come from?’”

Peck said state mandates enacted in the last decade increased training time and equipment testing, alongside increasing calls for service. While department membership has gone up in spite of the trend, Peck said those volunteers simply didn’t have time for the fireworks.

“It’s not a membership issue,” he said. “It’s just all of the extracurricular stuff that’s placed on fire departments today, it’s time away from family and that sort of thing on holidays.”

Still, Peck said the department hadn’t made a final decision yet.

“We had a meeting in December and decided we were going to shoot this year’s fireworks, because we had told the city we would,” he said. “We followed through with that with the understanding that after the fireworks are done this year that the city, the chamber, and the fire department would sit down and actually have a conversation about how were going to move forward.”

Officials involved said the city would still run a fireworks show in future years, even if the fire department doesn’t.

“The city and the Chamber are looking and working on a plan to still have fireworks for 2022,” said one Facebook post from the Wellman Chamber of Commerce, which helps finance the annual display.