.png)
3 days ago
4
Emergency crews arrived at a chaotic and gruesome scene in a neighbourhood of Honolulu, Hawaii, after a large new year’s firework tipped over and set off a fiery, shrapnel-studded blast that killed three people and injured more than 20 others, several of them critically.
Two women died at the scene and a third woman died in hospital, authorities said on Wednesday, as they implored people to abandon their new year’s tradition of setting off fireworks across the city. Officials promised tougher penalties for illegal fireworks.
The governor of Hawaii, Josh Green, described the deaths in detail at a news conference to emphasise the potential danger of fireworks. He said: “We are talking about the worst possible, war-zone injuries that took their lives.”
Some of the more than 20 people taken to hospital with severe burns and shrapnel wounds included children, said officials, who had not yet publicly identified any victims.
Police were investigating whether charges for the person who lit the firework at about midnight were warranted, Honolulu’s chief of police, Arthur Logan, said.
The blast happened at a three-storey home with a ground-level carport. Piles of debris, including bundles of blackened firework mortars, could be seen in front of the house on Wednesday morning.
The explosion broke windows across the street. It happened when a lit bundle of aerial, mortar-style fireworks, called a “cake”, tipped over or fell off a table and fired sideways into crates containing additional fireworks, which then exploded.
The cake’s rounds could be separated but had been lit as a bundle of 50, part of what officials said was tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of fireworks.
Ambulance crews arrived at the home but had to treat victims with the worst injuries several houses away because of parked cars and crowds on the streets, Honolulu’s emergency services department director, Dr Jim Ireland, said.
Some people nearby continued setting off fireworks even as victims of the explosion were being taken to hospital, officials said.
The neighbourhood is near Honolulu’s international airport and a joint US air force and navy base and a little more than 2 miles (3km) east of the USS Arizona memorial, which honours sailors who died in the attack on Pearl Harbor that drew the US into the second world war.
after newsletter promotion
Ireland said: “I have been in EMS over 30 years and this is probably one of the worst calls I have ever been on as far as the immense tragedy and amount of patients and severity of the injuries.”
A fourth person was killed in a different fireworks explosion elsewhere on Oahu, Hawaii, officials said. At least four other serious injuries occurred in unrelated fireworks accidents overnight.
Social media posts showed fireworks being set off across wide areas of Honolulu even though sparklers, fountains and aerial fireworks are illegal and a permit is required to set off firecrackers, according to the Honolulu fire department.
The mayor of Honolulu, Rick Blangiardi, said: “We’re angry, frustrated and deeply saddened at this unnecessary loss of life and suffering. It’s a tragic way to start the new year. No one should have to endure such pain due to a reckless and illegal activity.”
Green said he was looking into whether new penalties, including a felony charge for possessing large fireworks, were needed to curtail fireworks in Hawaii.
