ELKTON -- In a clearing on the edge of this Cecil County town stands a reminder of a bygone day when fireworks manufacturing was a booming business here.
About a dozen decaying buildings are all that remains of the Patriotic Fireworks factory, once ranked among the nation's top 10 fireworks plants. Now it is one of two distribution centers left here, remnants of the local fireworks industry, which started during the Great Depression, grew to include munitions during World War II and scaled back to fireworks after the war. Elkton's location about midway between Baltimore and Philadelphia, and the availability of black powder, produced in Delaware, made it an ideal location for fireworks plants.
During the industry's heyday, several area plants produced fireworks. Only Patriotic and another firm, Elkton Sparkler, remain today. Patriotic gets all of its fireworks from China, and Elkton Sparkler imports the bulk of its fireworks from there, producing a minuscule fraction of its sparklers here.
Business was brisk at Patriotic during the days leading up to the Fourth of July. Much of Patriotic's Internet advertising is aimed at out-of-state residents. Cars, recreational vehicles and even motorcycles - many with out-of-state plates - were on the parking lot as soon as it opened, waiting to load up on home-use fireworks.
According to Patriotic's Web site "almost anyone" can come to the warehouse to buy fireworks wholesale - as long as the order meets the minimum $200 purchase price and they are not "individual" Maryland residents. Under state law, Marylanders are prohibited from buying fireworks unless they are retailers who purchase state-approved items and hold a permit from the state fire marshal.
Paige Reed, the company's co-owner and vice president, said customers with identification showing that they are out-of-state residents older than 18 can make purchases as long as they immediately transport the fireworks out of Maryland.
"All of Maryland runs up to Pennsylvania to buy their fireworks," Reed said. "All of Pennsylvania comes down here."
Pennsylvania retailers do not have to check out-of-state fireworks laws either, prompting a recent crackdown in New Jersey, where possessing or transporting all types of fireworks is illegal. In the past week, New Jersey state police have arrested 50 people and confiscated nearly four tons of fireworks, said spokeswoman Jeanne Hengemuhle. Some arrests involved residents of other states who were passing through.
Fireworks restrictions are hard to keep track of, Reed said. "Everyone in the country wants fireworks," he said. "Nobody in the country understands all those crazy laws."
Not only is there a patchwork of laws governing states, Maryland's own laws are hodgepodge.
In Maryland, the only legal fireworks are sparklers, both hand-held and ground-based, and a number of novelty items such as toy pistols and ash-producing pellets known as snakes. Some jurisdictions have more stringent rules - Prince George's and Montgomery counties prohibit buying, selling and using fireworks without a license, as does Baltimore City. Ground-based sparklers are banned in Howard and Harford counties and Ocean City.
Because it gets so much out-of-state business, Patriotic, a division of a company called American Fireworks Warehouse, does not limit its catalog to Maryland-approved items. In addition to the typical sparklers, spinners and snappers, the warehouse is full of brightly boxed rockets, firecrackers and aerial explosives that work like scaled-down versions of city fireworks shows.
Those minidisplays, which sell for as much as $90 apiece, are the most popular, said sales manager Jack Leonard.
"You can't get an item too big," he said.
Elkton Sparkler - which is in neighboring North East but was named after the town with the greater industry reputation - has always been known for its popular original brand of sparklers. But now that the company imports many of the same items as Patriotic, sparkler sales are declining, said the company's president, Charles Shivery.
"There are lots more items for people to choose from," Shivery said.
The sale and use of all fireworks was outlawed statewide in 1941, a ban that lasted until the mid-1970s, when sparklers were legalized. Yet Elkton's fireworks plants quietly operated and flourished, receiving public attention only when accidental fires and explosions killed and injured workers.
During the worst period, which started in 1957 and lasted through the 1960s, a series of accidents killed 16 people and injured 41. After two explosions and a fire in the first half of 1969, the state closed three fireworks plants and a committee reviewed outlawing the industry. However, two of the plants were allowed to reopen a week later, and production continued under increased safety regulations.
By the time sparklers were legalized in Maryland in the 1970s, Elkton Sparkler, formed in 1946 by World War II munitions expert William C. Shivery, was arguably the top-ranked sparkler manufacturer in the nation, producing a million a day.
But President Richard M. Nixon had sounded the death knell for American fireworks manufacturers when he established trade relations with China, a country with a centuries-old reputation for pyrotechnics - and cheap labor.
In the mid-1980s, Elkton Sparkler started importing 10 percent of its merchandise. Then, as the price of domestic raw materials rose, that number went up and up, said Charles Shivery, the founder's grandson. Now the company manufactures in a year what it used to in a day.
Patriotic, founded in 1960 under a different name, started shutting down its plant little by little in the late 1980s, and by 2002 had switched to full import, Reed said.
"We just can't compete with the Chinese labor presence," he said. "They make like $50 a month, and we pay our people $10 to $15 an hour."
Now imports from China represent 98 percent to 99 percent of all consumer fireworks sold in this country and 75 percent of the fireworks used in community shows, said Julie L. Heckman, executive director of American Pyrotechnics Association. And as domestic consumer fireworks production has fallen, sales have risen because even with rising shipping and fuel costs, Chinese fireworks are cheaper.
"To be able to pay employees in the U.S. to make that same type of product, the cost of that product would be significantly higher," Heckman said.
Display companies, which sell city shows, have not fared so well because most are bound to a precontracted price even if their costs go up afterward, Heckman said.
That means a loss of business from small communities that have become unable to afford shows, said Dennis Coster, president of White Hall-based Fireworks Productions, the only display company operating in Maryland.
"We have no choice," he said. "We have to raise costs."
Now that the industry has relocated to China, so have the accidents. Chinese news sources report that hundreds are killed every year in fireworks factories there, some of them school-aged children working illegally.
"It's hard," said Reed, who has made regular business visits to China. "It's dangerous no matter where you are."
alia.malik@baltsun.com