ATF Makes Explosives Storage Notices Annual: 9,100 Storers, Local Fire Authorities, an Oct. 26 Start

Who in your county knows where the commercial explosives are kept? Under federal rules dating to 1998, the local fire authority was told once, when storage began, and never had to be told again [1]. A final rule from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, published September 25, changes that to every year [1]. It reaches about 9,100 storers and every fire authority that receives their notices, and it matters to the police chiefs and sheriffs whose people work those incident scenes alongside fire crews.

What ATF finalized on September 25

The rule amends 27 CFR 555.201(f) [1]. The existing duty stays: anyone storing explosives covered by part 555 must notify the authority having jurisdiction for fire safety of the type of explosives, the magazine capacity and the location of each site, orally by the end of the first day of storage and in writing within 48 hours [1].

Three things are new [1]:

• A written notice “once every 12 months following the initial notice, but no later than the end of the month during which the 12-month period is completed.”
• A written notice within 48 hours after storage at a site stops.
• Each written notice must carry its date and the name, title and agency of the fire official notified, and the storer keeps a copy for five years.

The rule takes effect October 26 [1]. ATF proposed it on August 23, 2023, and drew about 500 comments before the period closed November 21, 2023 [1]. The final version drops one proposed clause: the line requiring storers to make notices available for ATF inspection. ATF said commenters read it as implying the agency could enter the premises of people who hold no federal license, and the agency wrote that it has no right of warrantless entry to inspect explosives held by unlicensed storers [1].

The fire-notice rule was one of four ATF explosives documents published the same day. A second final rule closes out the two interim rules ATF issued in 2003 to carry out the Safe Explosives Act, which Congress passed as part of the Homeland Security Act of 2002 [2, 6]. It requires licensees and permittees to report each added or removed responsible person, and each added or removed employee authorized to possess explosives, to ATF’s licensing center within 30 days [2]. It also drops the remaining requirement that common or contract carriers verify the identity of whoever accepts a delivery for a limited permittee, and rescinds ATF Ruling 2003-5 [2]. Two proposals round out the package. One would add a testing exception and a perforating-gun exception to the locked-magazine rule and end the requirement for type 3 magazines, the small portable boxes used at job sites [3]. The other would fold magazine safety rules from four sections into one [4]. Comments on both are due November 24 [3, 4].

Who gets the paperwork, and who does not

The burden on storers is small by ATF’s count: five minutes a year each [1]. Of the roughly 9,100 people and businesses covered, ATF puts 8,774 as federal explosives licensees or permittees, most of them small businesses [1]. Based on its licensing center’s data, ATF estimates about 600 or fewer notifiers per state, and fewer at the local level [1].

The receiving end gets no instructions. ATF acknowledged that fire departments and municipalities “will receive additional notices, which will involve receiving, routing, and organizing this information,” but said the regulation “does not require local jurisdictional authorities to do anything specific with these notices” [1]. The rule names only the fire authority. ATF expects that local authorities are “likely to share information on explosives with other officials to the extent necessary to address a fire-related situation” [1]. Beyond that, whether a notice reaches a police dispatch center, a sheriff’s emergency manager or a bomb squad is a local arrangement the rule does not address.

That matters on scene. ATF’s reasoning rests on what firefighters do when they know explosives are present. “Firefighters and other fire safety officials generally do not attempt to fight a fire that involves explosive materials,” the preamble says; with advance knowledge, they “often evacuate the facility and the surrounding area” [1]. Evacuation of a perimeter is work police and deputies do. An annual notice that sits in a fire marshal’s inbox does not help a patrol supervisor setting up traffic points.

ATF points to the record of what happens without that knowledge. It cites a National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health report on the April 17, 2013, explosion at a burning Texas fertilizer plant, where ten emergency responders were killed less than 20 minutes after arriving [1, 5]. NIOSH listed “limited pre-incident planning of commercial facility” and “responders working within blast radius” among the contributing factors [5]. That plant held ammonium nitrate, not ATF-regulated explosives in magazines; ATF uses it to show why responders need to know the hazard before they arrive [1].

The scope is narrower than many commenters assumed. The rule does not cover consumer fireworks, small-arms ammunition or components such as primers and propellant, or commercial black powder up to 50 pounds for antique firearms, all exempt under 18 U.S.C. 845 [1]. ATF wrote that “small amounts of gunpowder for reloading” are not covered [1].

Two readings of a once-a-year letter

Support came from first responders and the explosives industry itself. Industry association representatives first recommended annual notices during listening sessions held under a 2013 executive order on chemical facility safety, saying they would offset turnover among emergency responders and create training opportunities [1]. One commenter quoted by ATF said updated information on explosives “will provide transparency and facilitate better preparation in advance of an incident” [1].

Opponents raised four objections, as ATF summarized them [1]:

• Duplication. Commenters said EPA Tier II inventory forms, OSHA right-to-know rules, DOT hazmat placards and fire codes already tell responders what is on site.
• A registry. A large group read the rule as a way to track people who reload ammunition. Some feared local authorities would pass the information to law enforcement or insurers, or that it would leak; one called it a way to “use local firefighters to spy on what lawful citizens own,” in ATF’s paraphrase.
• Local burden. Many said the notices would overwhelm understaffed fire departments, especially volunteer and rural ones, and one called the requirement a “logistical nightmare.”
• Constitutional claims. Commenters raised the Fourth, Ninth, Tenth and Fourteenth Amendments.

ATF rejected each. It said the rule does not change who must file or what is covered, only how often [1]. It said it knows of no other federal requirement to tell local fire authorities where explosives are stored [1]. It said the notices go to the local fire authority, not to ATF, and that “the rule would not create a registry of explosives storage locations” [1]. On leaks and hacking, ATF said local authorities have raised no such concerns with it under the existing one-time notice [1]. And it called the equal-protection claim “meritless” [1].

What I’m watching

October 26. The notice rule and the Safe Explosives Act rule take effect [1, 2]. The open question for agencies is how the first 12-month notice is timed for storers who filed their initial notice years ago; the regulatory text ties the clock to “the initial notice” and says nothing more [1].

November 24. Comments close on the two magazine proposals, including the plan to stop requiring type 3 magazines at job sites [3, 4]. That proposal changes how explosives are held while attended in the field, which is where a theft or a patrol call is most likely to start.