Istanbul -- Turkey
Three injured in explosion
Fire at Istanbul warehouse

2005 -- Three people were injured in an explosion and a subsequent fire on Wednesday at a fireworks warehouse in Turkey's biggest city Istanbul, a local official said.

Two of the injured were hospitalized with burns after the incident at the Kucukcesmece district in the city's European side, local mayor Aziz Yeniay was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying.

Earlier reports suggested that one of them was in a critical condition.

Yeniay said that the cause of the explosion was not yet clear but Anatolia said it happened when fireworks were being loaded onto a vehicle.

Firefighters had managed to bring the blaze under control, but explosions were still being heard at the partly-destroyed three-storey warehouse, the agency added.

The warehouse belonged to the municipality but was being used by a private company, the agency said.

Hebei Province -- China
Fireworks kill 9 in China

At least nine people have been killed in separate explosions in three illegal fireworks factories in north China's Hebei Province. The first blast occurred around noon on Thursday in Hengshui City, killing two people and leaving another seriously injured, the state media reported Saturday.

Another explosion that same afternoon in Xingtai City, killed the wife and son of an illegal firework producer Li Xinhua. Five others were killed in the third explosion in Dingzhou City Friday, said Xinhua.

The three deadly explosions have raised concerns over safety ahead of the Chinese lunar new year which will be celebrated February 9.

The Hebei Provincial Administration of Production Safety today asked local officials to step up efforts to ensure safety in local firework production and a smooth celebration of the upcoming Spring Festival holiday.

The Chinese burst a lot of firecrackers during Spring Festival, the most important holiday season for them.

 

Oxfordshire
Fireworks firm fined after leaking explosives found

2005 -- BRACKNELL Fireworks has been fined £28,000 after health and safety inspectors found boxes leaking explosives at its factory.

Witney Magistrates said the company was lucky no-one was seriously hurt because of the health and safety breach.

Inspectors checking the firm's licensed explosive factory in Oxfordshire in January 14, 2003, found several boxes of damaged fireworks leaking explosives.

None of the charges relate to the company's shop in Bull-brook.

The court heard how there was no system in place for disposing of damaged stock, and the company had not taken all due precautions to prevent an accident.

The chair of the magistrates said when sentencing: "It is only by the grace of God that two people were not killed or seriously injured. There is considerable doubt over the use of adequate procedures even after eight months of new management.

"This demonstrates the company were careless, and I could go further."

After the hearing HM Inspector of Safety and Health Dr Qamar Khan said: "Fortunately on this occasion the incident was discovered before anybody was injured, however the level of the fine imposed by the court today reflects the seriousness of the incident."

Bracknell Fireworks Ltd General Manager Andy Hubble said: "It is regrettable that Bracknell Fireworks Ltd finds itself in this position. It resulted from a single and uncharacteristic lapse in our usual safe practices at a storage site.

"Safety of the public was not an issue. The fireworks were contained in a re-enforced concrete storage facility many miles from the public. The Health and Safety Executive did not prosecute any offences relating to public safety."

He added that since the incident, the new management have passed all safety inspections and built a reputation for thorough risk assessment.

The company was fined £13,000 after pleading guilty to breaching health and safety rules, £2,000 for breaching the Explosives Act and £13,000 for court costs.

Shangrao city - Jiangxi province -- China
Truck carrying fireworks caused bus blast

2005 -- An explosion that killed some 30 people on a bus in China was caused when a truck carrying fireworks collided with a third vehicle, local reports said Friday.

The accident occurred early Thursday on a highway near the city of Shangrao in Jianxi province.All three vehicles were destroyed in the blast, the South China Morning Post reported.The victims all died at the scene, while seven villagers living nearby were injured and about 60 homes near the highway were destroyed.The seven remained in hospital Friday with serious injuries including broken bones and head injuries.The bus was traveling from Shenzhen to Quzhou in Zhejiang province.

The truck was transporting explosives for making fireworks from Hunan province to a factory in Zhejiang.

 

Powerful explosion kills up to 30 on bus in China

Up to 30 people were killed and seven injured when a double-decker bus was destroyed after a nearby truck ladened with explosives and fireworks blew up, state press and local officials said.

Initial investigations showed that the bus "was blown up by the explosion of a truck from Liuyang city of central Hunan province, a major firecracker producer", Xinhua news agency reported Thursday, citing local police.

The bus was travelling from Shenzhen in southern Guangdong province to eastern Zhejiang province when it took the full force of the blast at about 4:00 am near Shangrao city in Jiangxi province.

The truck was packed with fireworks and explosives, Xinhua said, without saying why its cargo had detonated.

China is the world's largest producer of fireworks but many fail to meet international safety standards, with fuses often made too-short and the use of banned volatile chemicals.

Police initially thought the bus had caused the blast, which was so powerful it was heard several kilometers (miles) away.

"I can only tell you that it was a sudden and unexpected explosion," Huang Hailing, a local official in Shangrao, earlier told AFP.

"As far as what specifically caused this explosion, only police experts will be able to say."

Huang said he could not immediately verify the Xinhua report.

"Police said that the exact death toll is hard to tell now, as victims were exploded into pieces," Xinhua said, adding that the toll was estimated on the bus's 30-person seating capacity.

No survivors were found on the vehicle which was "completely destroyed," Huang said.

Several buildings near the blast site were damaged and at least seven local villagers were slightly injured and hospitalized from the explosion, he added.

He refused to speculate on what had caused the blast while local police also refused comment.

In January a bomb exploded on a bus in northwestern Xinjiang region, killing 11 people and injuring seven.

That blast was blamed on a disgruntled worker who held a grudge against his former employer, a coal mining company near the scene of the explosion.

 

Pittston
OSHA cites fireworks firm for not following safety procedures

2005 -- The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration has fined Schaefer Pyrotechnics Inc. of Lancaster County $8,100 and ordered corrections in safety procedures for violations related to the Fourth of July fireworks accident in Pittston.

At least two-dozen people, but possibly as many as 50, suffered injuries such as burns, cuts and scrapes in the accidental explosion during the fireworks display finale along the Susquehanna River.

Two people, including a Schaefer employee, were seriously injured and hospitalized for several days. Three other employees suffered minor injuries in the explosion, caused by a faulty explosive.

Fred Reschauer, assistant area director in OSHA's Wilkes-Barre area office, said the company already has made some corrections and has until May 1 to make the others. "(The company) was given additional time to correct some items," Reschauer said.

Because the case still is open, he could not provide specific information on what has been corrected, he said. He did, however, provide copies of the citations. All of the violations are considered serious.

The first five violations, which came with an $1,800 fine, were for the company not providing employees with adequate information and training, the lack of information on chemical names, protective equipment and manufacturer data on the material safety data sheets.

Two other other violations, for which the company also was fined $1,800, were the lack of use of protective equipment for the face, hands and chest and the employer's failure to assess the workplace to determine if hazards necessitated the use of personal protective equipment.

OSHA also cited the company for not furnishing "employment free from recognized hazards that were causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm to employees." That carried a $4,500 fine.

The last violation relates to:

The company not using additional measures to prevent adjacent mortars from being repositioned in the event a shell exploded in a mortar.

Mortar racks not having sufficient strength to withstand failures and repositioning, causing fireworks to lift at low angles.

Fireworks devices not adequately positioned securely to prevent them from tipping over.

The display site including a building not of substantial fire-resistant construction, resulting in the building, Cooper's Seafood House Waterfront, catching on fire. The fireworks crew not conducting an adequate inspection of the fallout area after the display to locate unexploded pyrotechnics, some of which were found as long as two days after the show.

Members of the Scranton police bomb squad disposed of at least six unexploded shells from the area.

An estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people were watching the fireworks when the accident happened at about 10:15 p.m. The fireworks, launched from the Susquehanna River bank near Cooper's, began shooting horizontally when a malfunctioning shell exploded and caused adjacent shells to go off.

Fiery debris bounced off the embankment into the crowd. Efforts to reach Kimmel Schaefer, owner of Ronks, Lancaster County-based Schaefer Pyrotechnics, on Friday were unsuccessful.

The federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also was investigating the fireworks accident. Efforts to reach Scott Endy, acting resident agent in charge of the ATF Harrisburg office, also were unsuccessful on Friday.

ATF oversees licensing, delivery and storage of fireworks.

 

Kusavapatti village
Factory fire kills seven

2005 -- Seven people were killed and three injured when a fire broke out in a fireworks factory near Tamil Nadu's Madurai town Wednesday, police said.

The accident occurred in a factory in Kusavapatti village, about 15 km from Madurai.

The injured have been admitted in hospitals.

 

-- Seven persons were killed and three injured when a fire broke out in a fireworks factory at Kusavapatti, near Perungudi, 15 km from here today.

Police said all the injured were immediately rushed to hospitals.

Top police officials have rushed to the spot. Further investigation was on.

 

Moscow
3 Killed, 2 Injured in Explosion
at  Fireworks Warehouse

An explosion at two garage units in southern Moscow has left three people dead and another two wounded, sources in Moscow’s firefighting service were quoted by Itar Tass. The service’s central switchboard received a call about the incident in the two garage complex, located at a distance of around 300 meters from each other on the street Proletarsky Prospekt, at 13:40 Moscow time. At the time of reporting, experts were establishing the cause of the tragedy, and fire service officials ranked the fire as category two under the Russian system of five categories. A total of 20 firefighting teams were rushed to the site, but experts said the operation to extinguish the flames was complicated by the fact that pyrotechnics were stored in one of the garages.