America celebrates 250 years since the Declaration of Independence today. Most of us will mark the occasion the way John Adams predicted we would, with noise, light, gatherings, and spectacle. Adams thought July 2 would be the great anniversary because that was the day Congress voted for independence. History chose July 4 because that was the day the Declaration was adopted. Adams missed the date, but he understood the celebration. 1
Fireworks became part of America’s Independence Day tradition almost immediately. On July 4, 1777, Philadelphia celebrated the first anniversary of independence with cannon salutes, bells, public ceremony, and a fireworks display that reportedly began and ended with thirteen rockets. That tradition did not come out of thin air. Fireworks had been used for centuries in China and later Europe to celebrate power, victory, and public spectacle. Before the Revolution, American colonists used bonfires, bells, and ceremony to celebrate the king’s birthday. After independence, those same tools of public celebration were repurposed. The crown was gone, but the rockets remained. 2
The earliest reported Fourth of July celebration fire involving a structure that I can verify did not occur in Philadelphia, Boston, or New York. It occurred far away, in Fiji, on July 4, 1849. J. B. Williams, then the United States consul, must have been celebrating the American national anniversary on the island of Nukulau in very grand style. While firing a cannon and setting off squibs, his house caught fire and burned to the ground. What began as a patriotic celebration turned into a property loss and later became entangled in international claims and diplomacy. 3
Every fire has a cause, a consequence, and usually somebody left holding the ashes. The first important American warning about the danger of Fourth of July fireworks came seventeen years later in Portland, Maine.
On July 4, 1866, Portland was celebrating Independence Day when a fire started near Commercial Street, close to the waterfront. The suspected cause was either a firecracker or a cigar. The fire found dry material, wind, and congestion. It spread from the waterfront area into a lumber yard, then toward a sugar house, and then across the city. By the time the Great Fire of Portland finally burned out on July 5, roughly one-third of the city lay in ruins. The destruction was staggering. About 1,500 to 1,800 buildings were destroyed. Approximately 10,000 people were left homeless. Churches, banks, hotels, shops, offices, public buildings, and homes were gone. At the time, it was one of the greatest urban fire disasters America had seen, predating the Great Chicago Fire by five years.
Portland did not treat the fire as an unavoidable act of holiday misfortune. City leaders and fire officials understood that a celebration without restraint can become a catastrophe. According to historical accounts, fireworks were dumped into the Fore River after the disaster. The fire department formally urged the Board of Aldermen to ban consumer fireworks. The city’s fire chief warned that firecrackers were believed to have caused the July fire and that their use carried the risk of conflagration. 4
By 1868, Portland had an ordinance restricting the sale or distribution of “crackers, squibs, rockets or other fireworks” without a license. Maine eventually adopted a statewide prohibition on consumer fireworks in 1949. When Maine loosened state law in 2011 and allowed some consumer fireworks again, Portland chose not to follow the boom. The city continued its local ban on the sale and use of consumer fireworks. That decision was not merely modern caution. It was historical memory written into law.
Fireworks are festive until they land on a roof, blow into dry brush, ignite a balcony, or turn a neighbor’s home into smoke. Then everybody becomes very serious. Fire departments ask questions. Investigators preserve evidence. Insurers examine exclusions, negligence, causation, ordinance compliance, and subrogation. I have written about this before in “Fireworks are Loved by Americans–and Insurance Companies Seeking Not to Pay Fourth of July Fires,” “Happy 4th of July! Enjoy the Barbeques, Fireworks, and…Denied Claims?” and “Fourth of July Fireworks Not Favored By Insurance Companies.”
As a policyholder lawyer, I look at the Fourth of July with both admiration and a bit of caution. I love the community celebration and history of a people who were bold enough to declare independence and then noisy enough to keep celebrating it for 250 years. But I also know that fire does not care about patriotism and holiday traditions. No policyholder wants to worry about coverage at midnight while watching firefighters work. No family wants to celebrate freedom by losing a home. No city wants a fire to spread out of control.
So tonight, as fireworks light the sky, let’s celebrate America, liberty, the courage of those who signed the Declaration and those who defended its promise. Let the Fourth of July light up the sky, but not burn down the neighborhood.
Thought For The Day
“Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other.”
—John Adams, letter to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776
1 John Adams to Abigail Adams, July 3, 1776, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society; National Archives, ‘Creating the Declaration: A Timeline,’ noting that Congress adopted the Lee Resolution on July 2, 1776, and adopted the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.
2 The Evolution of Fireworks https://ssec.si.edu/stemvisions-blog/evolution-fireworks
3 https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Forty_Years_On_The_Pacific/Fiji
4 Greater Portland Landmarks, “Portland’s Great Fire of 1866”; Randy Billings, “Troubled Past the Spark for Portland’s Fireworks Ban,” Portland Press Herald, July 1, 2016; see also John Neal, Account of the Great Conflagration in Portland, July 4th & 5th, 1866 (Portland, Me.: Starbird & Twitchell, 1866), Maine Town Documents, No. 1019, DigitalCommons@University of Maine.