What to know about fireworks and the risk of wildfires this July 4

With wildfires raging across the western U.S., cities and states are restricting fireworks just as the nation gears up for one of its biggest Fourth of July celebrations in decades.

Utah recently banned personal fireworks displays, citing extreme wildfire risk. Governors in Colorado and New Mexico this week urged restraint, while cities and counties from the Southwest to Oregon and Washington have imposed restrictions of their own.

The message is simple: Families should attend professional displays instead of lighting fireworks in their own yards.

This July Fourth marks the nation’s 250th anniversary. The country is looking forward to an especially big version of the holiday’s usual mix of red, white and blue. From Mount Rushmore to Washington, D.C., and thousands of communities in between, spectacular displays are still planned.

In the past week alone, hundreds of wildfires erupted throughout the West, adding to the already above-average pace for acreage burned so far this year. The flames are being fueled by dry, windy conditions.

While the Southwest was hit particularly hard by an unusually dry winter and dismal snowpack, others parts of the U.S., including much of the East Coast and parts of the South, are experiencing varying levels of drought, according to data from the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Nearly 85% of wildfires are caused by people, both intentionally and unintentionally, such as when power lines fail or campfires are left unattended. Lightning strikes are a common natural cause, but rarer culprits, such as animals chewing exposed wires, can cause fires, too.

Ingredients for a wildfire include flammable vegetation, weather conditions and an ignition source. Fireworks serve as an ignition source, which is why the number of fires spikes each year on July Fourth, said Philip Higuera, a fire ecology professor at the University of Montana.

“It’s not because the Fourth of July is particularly always warm and dry and windy,” he said. “It’s because there are a lot of ignitions added to the landscape on that single day.”

Only Utah has enacted statewide restrictions, with Gov. Spencer Cox declaring an emergency because of wildfire risk. In other states, decisions are being made at a local level.

Although some cities and counties are still planning to hold fireworks displays, others have canceled them, including Colorado Springs, the second-largest city in Colorado. Wednesday's decision was made just as a Rocky Mountain foothills fire 50 miles (80 kilometers) south of the city surged across 55 square miles (142 square kilometers), destroying well over 100 structures.

Certain counties in Florida have burn bans in place.

Fireworks restrictions are nothing new, but some areas are making the call for the first time.

Frank Wirth, fire chief in Alamosa, Colorado, made the tough call to cancel his town's fireworks display because dry conditions are expected. The city of nearly 10,000 is surrounded by brush and grass, and several hundred people typically attend the annual fireworks show.

“I think they’re disappointed, and I’m disappointed, too,” Wirth said, but “fireworks are a cause of fires, there’s no two ways about it.”

The fireworks industry raked in $2.3 billion last year, and that figure could climb to $3 billion this year due to America 250 celebrations, according to Julie Heckman, executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association.

Heckman encouraged people to buy from a reputable licensed seller, whether it’s a big-box store or a nonprofit, and to follow the instructions to avoid injuries.

After using fireworks, have a bucket of water handy to soak the spent fireworks before disposing of them, she said. Just because there's not a flame, it doesn’t mean that combustion isn’t still happening.

Experts also said to pay attention to local authorities and to be mindful of any restrictions.

“The conditions dictate the tactics,” said Joe Ten Eyck, a wildland fire expert with the International Association of Fire Fighters. “And so that could put a damper on some people’s celebrating and they may have to celebrate in a different way.”

Intentionally or unintentionally causing a wildfire is a punishable offense nationwide, though the consequences vary by jurisdiction.

But the safest option is to forego personal fireworks and opt for a professional show, where fire crews are usually on standby. These days, some displays use drone shows instead of combustible pyrotechnics, which further minimizes the fire risk.

Volunteers Laurene Cardoza, foreground, and Jennifer Aragon work at a TNT Fireworks stand in Alhambra, Calif., Tuesday, June 30, 2026, ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Samantha Ramirez and her daughter Asa walk to a TNT Fireworks stand in Alhambra, Calif., Tuesday, June 30, 2026, to purchase fireworks ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Packages of fireworks are displayed at a TNT Fireworks stand in Alhambra, Calif., Tuesday, June 30, 2026, ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Jennifer Aragon, left, shows fireworks packages to a customer at a TNT Fireworks stand in Alhambra, Calif., Tuesday, June 30, 2026, ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Volunteers Laurene Cardoza, front, and Jennifer Aragon work at a TNT Fireworks stand in Alhambra, Calif., Tuesday, June 30, 2026, ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Packages of fireworks are displayed at a TNT Fireworks stand in Alhambra, Calif., Tuesday, June 30, 2026, ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

People purchase fireworks at a TNT Fireworks stand in Alhambra, Calif., Tuesday, June 30, 2026, ahead of the Fourth of July holiday. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Airlines across the U.S. worked to recover from the longest nationwide ground stop in 25 years that canceled thousands of flights Saturday, stranded hundreds of thousands of passengers, spread ripple effects around the world, and forced pro and college sports teams to scramble for alternate transportation.

New technology being added to the nation’s air traffic control system overloaded antiquated equipment and caused “intermittent” communications and radar gaps, leading to the flight shutdown of more than four hours, Trump administration officials said.

Airports were slowly returning to normal, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said, with planes taking flight and landing. But the effects could be felt for days. Officials say the system will likely return to normal in time to handle the Thanksgiving travel rush.

The nationwide stop was the first since January 2023, when another key Federal Aviation Administration computer system that sends notices to pilots malfunctioned, and the second since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Andrew Charlton, an aviation consultant, said Friday's stoppage affected about a quarter of the 45,000 flights in the U.S. each day.

“The knock-on effect of that is incredible,” said Charlton, managing director of Aviation Advocacy. “The aircraft doesn’t just fly from A to B and back to B and then stop. It then moves onto C and then over to E and around and around and around. It is, of course, exacerbated if you’re talking about long-haul flights, international flights over the Atlantic or over the Pacific.”

At airports, passengers stared at screens showing delays or rushed to find buses or trains to their destinations.

Emily Brown and her 14-year-old daughter waited more than four hours Friday at the Dallas airport for their flight to Columbus, Ohio, before giving up. They were traveling to surprise her daughter’s best friend. Instead, she had to settle for phoning the friend through tears in the airport, Brown said.

“She saved up her money to buy her own ticket, and she’s planned this whole weekend,” Brown said. “Now we’re not sure when we’re gonna be able to go.”

A cheerful Southwest Airlines gate agent greeted passengers at Dallas Love Field at dawn Saturday with, “Good morning, good morning,” then repeatedly said all flights were full and asked passengers to have boarding passes ready to expedite the process and help keep flights moving.

Sports teams scheduled to play this weekend adjusted game start times, searched for hotel rooms, rescheduled flights and chartered buses.

Auburn University's football team opted to take a bus to Mississippi State, and the Saturday start time was pushed back from noon ET to 4:15 p.m. Other universities affected by the stoppage included Baylor, Washington, Kansas State, Minnesota and No. 19 Ole Miss, which did not plan to fly until Saturday morning for its game against Oklahoma.

FlightAware, a website that tracks flights, said more than 4,100 flights had been canceled. Cirium, a similar site, put that number above 3,200 flights.

Corbyn Wascher's flight was on the tarmac at the Charlotte, N.C., airport for four hours Friday on his way home to Moline, Illinois, from a conference in Miami. The 37-year-old high school teacher paid $100 to take an Uber to a hotel 25 minutes from the airport after he was unable to find a flight until Saturday afternoon to Chicago.

At London’s Heathrow Airport, several flights to and from the U.S. were listed as delayed or canceled Saturday.

“While U.S. flights have resumed, there may be some follow-on disruption as airlines work to rebook affected passengers and get all services back to normal,” said Tim Johnson, consumer director at the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority.

Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told reporters at the White House that no one was in any danger as more than 3,000 flights in the air at the time of the grounding order landed safely.

Duffy blamed Congress for failing to approve more funding for new technology, while downplaying the fact that trying to implement new fixes overtaxed the system. He suggested more disruptions might occur.

“We didn’t think we would have this kind of outage. We did,” he said. “We were able to review what went wrong, and then reboot the system and go. But, you will have more of these.”

Duffy said the failure involved old equipment and was not linked to the FAA’s new AI-powered system, which the agency is rolling out to help predict problems in the sky.

The problem was due to updating a system that can never shut down, Charlton said.

“What you’re watching here is trying to change the tires of your car when the car’s going at 80 miles an hour down the expressway, because nothing stops in aviation,” Charlton said. “It’s a 24/7 operation. And to make changes on the fly, if you’ll pardon that pun, is incredibly complex and dangerous.”

The FAA already replaced thousands of old copper wires with fiber optic lines and upgraded hundreds of radio systems as part of the overhaul that began last year after Congress approved $12.5 billion in funding. Duffy and the White House are pushing for $30 billion more to complete the work.

The problem appeared similar to a regional air traffic control communication outage in September that snarled hundreds of flights across the Northeast, although that disruption was linked to a construction crew cutting a fiber optic line. Aging equipment was also blamed for brief radar outages last year that disrupted Newark airport.

Aviation safety expert Steve Arroyo said the difference this time was the nationwide scale of the disruption, which left controllers unable to reliably talk to pilots.

“If you don’t have that ability, whether it’s because the old wires that they have are just run down or for whatever reason, you’ve got to stop airplanes on the ground and not put them in the air, where you’re going to risk not being able to communicate with them,” said Arroyo, a former United Airlines pilot.

It differed from the one after 9/11 because planes were not being told to land immediately and pilots likely were able to communicate with ground controllers at airports, Arroyo said.

Funk reported from Omaha, Nebraska, and Golden from Seattle. Associated Press journalists David Keyton in Berlin; Stephen Hawkins in Dallas; Mead Gruver in Fort Collins, Colorado; Jessica Hill in Las Vegas; Ali Swenson in Chicago; Alex Veiga and Jaimie Ding in Los Angeles; Seung Min Kim and Aamer Madhani in Washington; Hannah Schoenbaum in Salt Lake City; and Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.

Passenger watch as workers unload luggage from a United plane as flights are delayed at Los Angeles International Airport Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Ethan Swope)

Passengers wait as flights are delayed inside a terminal at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

The sun sets over Dallas Fort Worth International Airport in DFW Airport, Texas, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

A passenger moves through Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International airport as all flights are canceled or delayed, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Atlanta. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

People wait at a terminal at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, in Arlington, Va., after the FAA issued a nationwide ground stop. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner)

An agent helps travelers at a ticketing desk at LaGuardia Airport in New York, Friday, Nov. 13, 2026, after the Federal Aviation Administration grounded flights nationwide. (AP Photo/Ryan Murphy)