The Montecito neighbourhood is one of the quietest areas in all of Burnaby.
I should know – I lived there for five years and my mom still lives there.
But it’s getting more and more dangerous, especially from drivers who scream up and down Duthie Avenue in a ratrunner fury – enough so that two people died this summer right in front of Montecito Elementary. The city is now studying how to slow drivers down.
And now, on Halloween night, it was bedlam thanks to some clown firing up some fireworks.
Look, I get that people love them some fireworks, but when you are too stupid to know how to use them it’s downright dangerous.
“There were fireworks at Montecito Elementary on Halloween night,” one area resident told me. “The person lighting them was pretty reckless and one of the projectiles hit a teen, another went into a crowd with children as young as 5 and narrowly missing a few of them. The person who was lighting them ran away after that happened and the person is hiding from the community - we are all looking for an apology.”
Like how hard is it to fire a piece of fireworks into the air? Why would someone aim it at a crowd of people?
Whoever this person was, they are lucky they didn’t get caught by the mob.
“They were such a jerk,” said another resident. “Just absolute dumb behaviour.”
Other people were pretty upset about the fireworks in their neighbourhoods. Kathryn Webb wrote in about what it was like with the noise terrifying her dog.
“On Halloween night, it went on for hours until well after midnight and it’s heartbreaking to see an animal in such distress, but I suppose that people who do something illegal don’t have much sympathy for that. Also, this morning, I took a garbage bag out to George McLean Park because I knew that there would be garbage left; people like that seem to think someone else will pick up after them. I collected two big garbage bags of leftover garbage from their ‘fun.’ In the great scheme of things, this is not an earth-shattering problem but once again, it is indicative of how our community has deteriorated over time and it is regrettable.”
I know people want cities to enact tougher and tougher bylaws about fireworks, but they simply won’t be able to stop people from blasting them off, Instead, we need more education.
Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.
