Smokimg and vaping around fireworks

[Birdman]

When I was about 9 or 10 our town had a jubilee celebration and my father's friend worked for the display company hired to do the fireworks show. My father arranged for his friend to take me and a few friends to see the shoot site. When the time came I gathered a few of my friends and followed my dads friend to the site. About 100 yards or so from the site he stops us and asks us to hold out our hands and asks if anyone is smoking or has matches or lighters in their pockets. My first thought....how does he know me and my friends had tried smoking before? I then hoped all of my friends were telling the truth when they said no. He then went on to lecture us on the dangers and how powerful the fireworks were he was about show us. He also told us a few rather graphic stories of what can happen. He was dead serious and looked at us like a father would when he wanted to make sure you knew there was room for jokes or dishonesty. He then gave us 3 rules....no touching anything (not even each other)...No hands in pockets and always stay behind wherever he was standing. Needless to say this talk put some real fear in me and kept us on our best behavior.

On a side note the tour he gave us was awesome and taught me some of my first lessons about shells and different types of fuse etc. He even wrote all of our names on the first shell of the show.

Skip ahead 10 years or so and I'm buying and hand lighting my own consumer fireworks. I was a smoker back then but I always kept in mind that experience and didn't take smoking around fireworks lightly, although admittedly not as seriously as I would had I been handling 1.3. I switched to vaping several years ago and while I never keep my e-cig near when I'm poking, loading shells, fusing etc, I do not have the same concern vaping around fireworks like I did smoking, at least when I'm not directly handling them or being in a location like a retail store where there are lots of fireworks. Of course I'm not handling 1.3 and I think I would show some more respect to it then the 1.4 I'm handling. I would use a cigarette to light my cakes back when I smoked. The first year I started vaping all I had was a lighter which resulted in several burnt fingertips. It's actually one of the reasons I started looking into remote firing but buying punks solved that problem in the short term.

This has often made me wonder if my dads friend would have asked if any of us had an e-cig if that tour would occur today? I assume e-cigs would have been treated like cigarettes, lighters, matches etc. by him but not sure. However, I finally feel compelled enough to ask if there are specific rules or guidelines for vaping or what precautions, or lack thereof, others take when it comes to smoking or vaping around fireworks or at shoot sites, whether it be 1.4, AOP or 1.3. I'm curious if this is even all that common these days or ever. I've also wondered if any of this is covered in PGI courses? Admittedly, one of the reasons I have yet to take a GPI course is because I'm not sure how they would handle vaping or if/when I would be allowed to vape. I want to assume there are breaks when people can smoke/vape but not sure? Maybe smoking/vaping is more common then I believe.

[Engineer Cat]

Being there is no open flame, or any flame at all with a vape I would tend to think it's not problem. However if I was on a shoot site helping to load mortars or wire up stuff I wouldn't vape because even though it's not smoke being exhaled I'm sure others would have anxiety suddenly seeing what appears to be smoke in the shoot area.

Unfortunately I still smoke. The vapes just make me cough. I do plan on quitting this year though. When I'm poking cakes like I will be doing tonight, I just take a break now and then and go to the other side of the yard 20 feet away from where I'm doing the poking. Same when setting up the show on show day but much further away from the dock I shoot from. I have noticed every year so far someone always come walking down the gangplank to see what I'm doing with a cigarette and I gotta tell them to back off. I think this year I'll get a no smoking sign and put it on the gangplank.

[Arclight]

Cigarette butts in/around your magazine is something an ATF inspector will bust you for.

[Jay_]

Smoker here. Like engineer cat, I just use a little common sense when smoking.

If your vape was to freak out and catch on fire, yes I can see where that would be a problem....but the same could be said about your phone, video camera, ect... and I do not see why it would be considered any more dangerous than those items.

I do understand your point about being more cautious with the 1.3/1.4pro with the big long leader of quick match attached. With 1.4 consumer, it obviously has to be treated with caution but at the end of the day most anything with green fuse on it is difficult to light unless you are holding an open flame directly on it.

[Birdman]

If your vape was to freak out and catch on fire, yes I can see where that would be a problem....but the same could be said about your phone, video camera, ect... and I do not see why it would be considered any more dangerous than those items.

Not only that but writing this I realized some of my Cobra mods have lithium batteries in them.

[Engineer Cat]

Hehehe my wife came out to see how I was doing poking cans tonight and I had to tell her to back off. LOL:rolleyes:

[Rick_In_Tampa]

At a PGI convention maybe 3 years ago now, there was a guy and his wife doing a class on what they called "Dragons Breath." Basically, gas mines. This guy did his little classroom thing and then everyone went over to the ground salute area where they were going to do their demo.

This fool shows up with two 5 gallon gas cans in the back of his pickup truck, and he and his wife are both sitting in the truck smoking. My buddy and I are both on the PGI Safety Team and we're standing there in disbelief. Then they got out of their truck, lit cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, and each one grabs a gas can and starts walking towards the group and their gas mines.

My buddy and I told the crowd to get back and we walked quickly over to the guy and, well, we had words. Not pretty words either. This fool told us that he knew more about gasoline than the people at BP. So he wasn't worried about blowing himself up.

Long story short, he did his demo with the crowd much further away than he had liked. He was also reported to our boss and he didn't show up the following year. Or the year after.

Every year we have to stop someone from walking out on the C line with a cake in one hand and a beer in the other. It just boggles my mind. They actually get pissed when I tell them that they can't drink and shoot fireworks.

Common sense just isn't as common as it once was.

[Engineer Cat]

At a PGI convention maybe 3 years ago now, there was a guy and his wife doing a class on what they called "Dragons Breath." Basically, gas mines. This guy did his little classroom thing and then everyone went over to the ground salute area where they were going to do their demo.

This fool shows up with two 5 gallon gas cans in the back of his pickup truck, and he and his wife are both sitting in the truck smoking. My buddy and I are both on the PGI Safety Team and we're standing there in disbelief. Then they got out of their truck, lit cigarettes hanging out of their mouths, and each one grabs a gas can and starts walking towards the group and their gas mines.

My buddy and I told the crowd to get back and we walked quickly over to the guy and, well, we had words. Not pretty words either. This fool told us that he knew more about gasoline than the people at BP. So he wasn't worried about blowing himself up.

Long story short, he did his demo with the crowd much further away than he had liked. He was also reported to our boss and he didn't show up the following year. Or the year after.

Every year we have to stop someone from walking out on the C line with a cake in one hand and a beer in the other. It just boggles my mind. They actually get pissed when I tell them that they can't drink and shoot fireworks.

Common sense just isn't as common as it once was.

WOW. I bet your eyes bulged out of your heads. :eek:

Some people need to learn the hard way.

[Mattp]

That’s a pretty cool story,, about being shown a pro site as a kid .. I do know that on pro shoot sites for the company I work for ,, the first thing layed out is a designated smoking area,, I believe it’s a minimum of 50’ away and is a nfpa requirement ,,, and that goes for vapes too

[Rick_In_Tampa]

WOW. I bet your eyes bulged out of your heads. :eek:

Some people need to learn the hard way.

Oh yeah. That was quite possibly the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Neither one of could believe what we were seeing. The guys comments and explanations just further reinforced the fact that he was a moron and a danger to everyone around him. Personally, I have nooooo problem watching someone like that do himself in. I just don't want to see any innocent bystanders get hurt in the process.

[Tmaas77572]

Being there is no open flame, or any flame at all with a vape I would tend to think it's not problem. However if I was on a shoot site helping to load mortars or wire up stuff I wouldn't vape because even though it's not smoke being exhaled I'm sure others would have anxiety suddenly seeing what appears to be smoke in the shoot area.


I have surveillance footage from one of my grocery stores that show an associate walking out the door. She had a vape battery and cartridge in her coat pocket, and it randomly exploded. Shot a huge shower of sparks through the coat right before setting the whole thing on fire. She couldn't get the coat off quick enough, and ended up with some pretty good burns on her side and right arm.

[Engineer Cat]

I have surveillance footage from one of my grocery stores that show an associate walking out the door. She had a vape battery and cartridge in her coat pocket, and it randomly exploded. Shot a huge shower of sparks through the coat right before setting the whole thing on fire. She couldn't get the coat off quick enough, and ended up with some pretty good burns on her side and right arm.

Yea I've seen some of those videos. My boss was at the Tropicana in Atlantic City a few years back and his vape caught on fire and he dropped it and burnt a hole in the rug in the casino. lol Since there's a possibility of flames shooting out of it, probably not a good idea to bring a vape on the shoot site. There not SUPPOSED to have flames coming out of them. lol

[Birdman]

The lithium batteries used can catch fire or explode if proper precautions are not taken. My guess with employee at the grocery store is that she had a battery in her pocket that wasn't properly stored in a protective case or silicon sleeve that would cover the contacts. The battery probably came in contact with the cartridge of some other metal object that cause it to short out. You should never store batteries loose like that without them being in some sort of protective case or covering. Most quality batteries will come with cases or sleeves. The second incident at Tropicana (which happens to be one my favorite places) isn't as clear. It could have been a damaged battery or defective mod (i.e. e-cig). It's also possible he was using an unregulated mod rather than a regulated mod that has protections built into the circuitry to shut off the battery when a potentially dangerous condition is detected. Anyone who vapes should know these dangers and how to avoid them. Basic rules are use quality batteries with a quality regulated mod/e-cig, never use a damaged battery (peeling, dented etc) and always store your batteries in a protective case. If you do these simple things you should never have an issue. Even though I do all of these things I'm still extra cautious around fireworks.

[Arclight]

Since the state governments and FDA seem to be constantly trying to make e-cigarettes contraband, it doesn't surprise me that there is a lot of shady "AliExpress" type products being used that may or may not have any protective devices.

[Birdman]

Since the state governments and FDA seem to be constantly trying to make e-cigarettes contraband, it doesn't surprise me that there is a lot of shady "AliExpress" type products being used that may or may not have any protective devices.

Most e-cigs are regulated. Unregulated mods are far less common these days. The trend over the last few years has been towards smaller less powerful devices. For awhile there the market was mostly catering to those that wanted big powerful devices that could create huge amounts of vapor. I recently replaced my "box mod" with a small pod style device that has a small internal battery and uses a pressure switch instead of an on/off button. I think 2 things are driving this change. The first is technology is evolving so you don't need a big device to deliver a satisfying vape. The second is vaping becoming just as socially unacceptable as smoking so people are looking to be more discrete.