Despite the city’s recent efforts to increase fines and conduct public outreach to curb illegal fireworks, the Redwood City Police Department was still inundated by calls for service regarding the problem on Independence Day.
A few people wrote to the RCPD Facebook page complaining about the lack of police response to calls about fireworks use, with one stating, “my poor dogs are terrified.”
RCPD noted it was a very busy July 4, with over 480 calls for service. Of them, more than 100 were for fireworks-specific calls, police said.
In city documents, Redwood City Fire Department Chief Stan Maupin cited an average of 176 reported incidents from July 1 through July 6 annually over the past decade. We don’t know right now how many incidents total have occurred since July 1.
The highest number of reported incidents during the period of July 1-July 6 was in 2013 with 236, while the lowest was in 2017 with 125 reported incidents, city documents showed.
