Lawrence Police Department

Lawrence police took almost 200 fireworks calls for July 4 celebrations, but issued just three citations, according to the police department.

From midnight Friday through early Wednesday afternoon. Lawrence police had 188 calls for service categorized as fireworks calls, Officer Andrew Fennelly said.

During the same five and a half day time frame, police issued three citations for violating the city’s fireworks ban, Fennelly said.

Two of those tickets stemmed from the same incident, Fennelly said. Officers cited two men after responding just after 11 p.m. Saturday to the 400 block of Michigan Street, where fireworks had caused a small grass fire that the suspects put out with a garden hose.

With the exception of “novelty items” such as snappers and sparklers, fireworks are banned in the Lawrence city limits. People can be fined up to $200 for violating the city’s fire code, according to ordinance.

The number of tickets issued was low compared with some recent years. In the past police have issued an average of nine tickets a year, the Journal-World previously reported. In 2014, an especially busy year, officers handed out 44 citations in a seven-day period.

Fennelly said this year the police department focused primarily on education and confiscation of illegal fireworks.

He said it was a busy weekend for police with other calls, so many of the fireworks calls were not dispatched immediately.

“As a result, when officers responded to the calls, a vast majority of the time the offenders were not observed in the act,” Fennelly said, in an email. “This makes it very difficult to enforce the ordinance. Officers did focus on trying to identify offending individuals and then seizing any illegal fireworks that were visible.”

Lawrence-Douglas County Fire Medical responded to one fireworks injury on July 4, Division Chief Eve Tolefree said. She said a possible burn from fireworks was reported but that the person chose to go to Lawrence Memorial Hospital by private vehicle before emergency personnel arrived on scene.

The fire department responded to at least one fire caused by illegal use of fireworks, according to the department’s Facebook page. Wooden shingles caught fire at a home on Stone Meadows Drive. Nobody was hurt.

Information about fireworks related injuries treated at Lawrence Memorial Hospital was not available Wednesday afternoon.