Thursday is the first day of legal fireworks sales in Iowa, but no retailers are licensed yet.
State Fire Marshal Jeffrey Quigle says his office is conducting inspections Thursday and expects to issue licenses for consumer fireworks sales in the next few days.
He says there are 500 to 600 registrants in the online portal for prospective fireworks retailers.
"And what I mean by that is they're people who are interested, and they’ve gone in and set up their account and just gave some brief information," Quigle says. "But right now, we have about 80 actual applications that are in progress."
The fireworks bill was signed into law less than a month ago.
Quigle says the State Fire Marshal Division has been working quickly to prepare for the first legal fireworks sales period starting June 1 and ending July 8.
He says it usually takes six to nine months to adopt new administrative rules.
"I had to pull both myself and about four other staff, and pull them off what they were doing to focus on the fireworks retailer licenses being issued," Quigle says.
He says the State Fire Marshal website will be updated with rules and safety tips for fireworks.
Meanwhile, some local governments are putting restrictions on where fireworks can be sold. That has raised some legal questions.
