Fireworks, alcohol and humans are often a combustible mix ....
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| Mr McGrew Before The Accident |
In the UK the number of accidents appear to have dropped over the last few decades (I certainly recall the subject being discussed on TV after each Guy Fawkes night when I was a kid).
But no matter how safety concious we become (to the point of paralysis in some areas) in our societies, you can't legislate or plan on the actions of the individual. In the USA fireworks night is associated with the Fourth of July parties, so that's when alcohol and fireworks are sometimes combined with foolhardy actions, or perhaps that's just, with fools.
National Reports indicate that despite the large number of people celebrating with fireworks only around 10 people each year are killed in firework-related incidents, although larger numbers are injured to some degree or other.
Police / first responders were called to a 4th of July celebration in Summerville near Charleston, South Carolina after one such an incident, and found 41 year old Allen Ray McGrew lying on the road. Nearby was his wife and son, Paige the wife explained to the officers that Mr McGrew had "ignited a large firework device," then “he was holding this firework over his top hat, I thought he was just show boating before he set it on the ground. I didn’t realize he had already lit it.” She added that it was "possibly to show off" with it blowing into the air.
The police report confirmed that his wife and some others had tried to get him to take if off his head and drop it to the ground. "She was trying to tell Allen no to do that when the firework went off and she observed Allen collapse". He was dead on the scene, killed instantly. The Dorchester County Coroner ruled the death an accident, caused by "massive head trauma with cerebral avulsion". Toxicology results were pending return, but friends had confirmed that he had been drinking.
A strange death, but not entirely unique, way back in July 2015, Devon Staples and his friends had been drinking and setting off fireworks in the backyard of a friend’s home in the small eastern Maine city of Calais. Staples, 22, placed a fireworks mortar tube on his head and set it off. The firework exploded, killing Staples instantly. His death was the first fireworks fatality in Maine since the state legalised fireworks on 1 January 2012, authorities said.
I guess fireworks will always carry some risk when combined with humans and drinking ....
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