Mayor Sheehan Fights The Barrage Of Nightly Illegal Fireworks

Saturday night I was sitting on my porch with my wife and our 10-year-old Newfoundland, Grace. It was a quiet, peaceful night, the sun had just set with a beautiful sunset of pinks, oranges, and reds.

As I sipped my adult beverage.....BOOM...a huge firework shell exploded from a couple of houses down from ours. Now, don't get me wrong, I love fireworks, right around 4th of July or at a baseball game, but not at some random time while I'm trying to enjoy my evening outside. It's bad enough for humans, but our dogs go crazy when the fireworks start. Gracie, our 130lb Newf jumped up, scared to death, knocked over the table my drink was one, and sprinted to our front door. She was absolutely scared to death.

Now, it's one thing to scare pets with your fireworks, but I can't even imagine some of our veterans who suffer from PTSD hearing these huge explosions night after night this summer. It's got to be horrible.

Not to mention, it's a fire risk. About 5 years ago someone in my neighborhood launched one of those flaming Chinese lanterns and it landed in a bush behind my house...it caught fire. Luckily, we noticed it and quickly put it out. The neighbors joking about our biblical burning bush was funny, but it could have burned out house down.

Albany's Mayor Sheehan is trying to curb the use of illegal fireworks in Albany by setting up a 100% anonymous tips website at capitalregioncrimestoppers.com/.

In her Facebook post, Mayor Sheehan asked residents of the Capital Region to, "Please think of your friends, neighbors, seniors, children, and pets. The nightly barrage of fireworks is hurting our entire city and we owe it to one another to call for it to stop."

If you are caught with illegal fireworks you can be fined up to $500.