Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: July 8, 2012

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REAL LIFE NEWS: 4TH JULY FIREWORKS PREMATURE DETONATION

by Hazed

The say that guns don’t kill people. But they do kill fireworks, in rather spectacular fashion as a man found out when he decided to test-fire his new gun in the middle of the night - and ignited a storage container full of fireworks.

The pyrotechnics were intended for the 4th July celebrations in Bainbridge Island and Poulsbo, Washington, and were packed up, organized and ready to go in a container at an auto-wrecking yard.

But the owner of the yard got trigger happy at one in the morning, and one of his shots hit an old wrecked car and ricocheted off - striking the container containing the fireworks. $80,000 worth.

The result was, predictably, explosive. As one of the organisers of the celebrations, Ron Krell of Viking Fest, said, “Within about a second the box contained no explosives. It exploded, and we had the greatest fireworks show you ever would have wanted to not see.”

The explosion was heard over a mile away, and when it was over, there was a smoking crater containing the charred hulk of the container, which had been propelled about 20 feet.

“It went boom,” said Jeromy Hicks, investigator for Mason County Fire District 2, who was called to the scene. “I think it was a cascading series of explosions that lasted about a minute. I live a mile and a half away, and it shook my wife out of bed. She said, ‘Man, I think we just had an earthquake.’ Me, I sleep through anything.”

The fireworks were provided by Robert Nitz, a mortgage-finance specialist who produces budget fireworks shows in his spare time under a company he set up, Aurora Fireworks. The bad news is that although he has insurance for the usual public liability issues such as a firework hitting a bystander or landing on someone’s roof, the contract doesn’t cover somebody destroying them by shooting a gun at them.

Similarly, the auto wrecking yard’s insurance isn’t going to cover such as unlikely scenario, despite the owner clearly being at fault. Krell said, “He readily admits it. He knew the container was there, he knew the container contained fireworks, he accepts responsibility. But we don’t think the insurance will cover it, because it happened on business property and shooting a gun at 1 in the morning has nothing whatever to do with his business of auto wrecking - though he did wreck some autos.”

Nitz got on the phone and scrambled to buy replacement fireworks, paid for out of his own pocket. He couldn’t, he said, tell two towns there would be no Fourth. An internet campaign to raise funds may see him reimbursed - let’s hope so.

Source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2018585460_fireworks03.html

This reminds me of the story from last November of the Scottish fireworks display where half an hour’s worth of fireworks were released in just under a minute. That was some display! I covered it in the Star at the time, but if you need a reminder, here’s the video: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15611160.

Stop press: the same thing has just happened in San Diego, where an error released 15 minutes-worth of fireworks in just 30 seconds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuJHfkXEI-o.

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