McHenry County Blog

Reading a Chicago Tribune story on November 15th about a Kenosha fireworks factory explosion brought back some memories.

During my first year in the General Assembly (1973), two fireworks factories blew up in McHenry County.

One was on McCullom Lake Road just east of Route 31. Probably a big box store there now.

The other was just south of downtown Huntley.

The amazing thing was that the State Fire Marshall, which was supposed to regulate the two knew of neither.

I passed a resolution asking the Illinois Crime Investigation Commission, Charles Siragusa’s legislative commission, to investigate the situation.

Concurrently, I asked a congressman to request a General Accounting Office probe of the situation. After all, wasn’t ATF supposed to be regulating the same busineses?

Siragusa went off on an interesting tangent tracing M-80’s to the mo, but the most interesting finding was that the state investigators did not know the feds were involved and the GAO report did not mention that the State Fire Marshall had regulatory powers.

The story also stirred up the family memories of my grandmother Addie Watling Skinner having led fellow employees to safety when a fireworks factory where she was employed in Chestertown, Maryland, blew up.

She told me that if the chain link fence had not been loose at the bottom, she would have lived to tell the story.

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The report was published in June of 1974.