On today's episode, we explore the shocking world of incidents and fatalities resulting from fireworks during the Independence Day celebrations. Join me as we meticulously unravel the heart-wrenching stories of lives tragically lost, examining the causes, circumstances, and devastating consequences of these incidents. Discover the dangers lurking behind the beautiful fireworks displays, and the importance of safety and responsible celebration. Get ready to uncover the dark side of fireworks in this haunting episode. Listener discretion is advised.
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0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly true crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:30 Happy Fourth of July from Texas.
0:33 I hope that y'all are having a great force and you're not getting the rain that we're getting here.
0:39 Many of our fireworks shows have been rained out.
0:42 I know that we were supposed to have a drone show last night and I was kind of looking forward to that because it sounds like an interesting concept.
0:51 I love it because the risks and all the dangers are not there.
0:57 And you can even have more customized things that you can visualize in the sky like American flags, custom logos and they say that they can even make QR codes that work from the sky.
1:13 So that's a great way to advertise for businesses, but very creative things replacing those traditional fireworks that we normally see in the sky.
1:24 And I think that those may be up and coming.
1:28 You know, most of the shows are free.
1:31 It allows people to just go out without really worrying about being injured.
1:36 I don't know about y'all.
1:36 But growing up, I was always scared that an amber or something.
1:41 I don't know.
1:42 I was just nervous that something bad was going to happen just because I've heard it happening.
1:47 I've seen it happen now since I work where I work historical data shows that the US can expect to see countless people wounded or killed in fireworks incidents this year.
1:58 Now, between 06 and 2021 fireworks injuries soared about 25%.
2:06 And that's in the US.
2:08 Now, in 2021 there were at least nine people killed and around 11,500 actually injured and of the nine deaths, six were associated with people just misusing them, just plain and simple, not doing it correctly.
2:26 One was associated with a faulty mortar launch and two the cause were actually unknown.
2:32 So of course, young adults 20 to 24 saw the highest rate of fireworks related injuries and that's what we call at the medical examiner's office.
2:44 I hold my beer and watch this moment.
2:47 We see a lot of people trying to do stupid things to try to impress their friends.
2:52 You know, look what I can do.
2:54 This is the coolest thing ever.
2:56 And then of course, you don't really think that it's going to go wrong, but when it does, it's mortifying because it happens in front of your friends.
3:05 Now, some ways to avoid injuries are to never use illegal fireworks.
3:13 And I guess, you know, really, we don't really know if they're illegal or not when we buy them on the roadside stands, we assume they're legit because they're in packaging.
3:22 But we don't always know, of course, never allow young Children to handle them.
3:29 Never use them while impaired by drugs and alcohol.
3:33 Like I said, this is not, I hold my beer and watch this time of day.
3:37 Never hold lighted ones in your hand.
3:40 And of course, never let them indoors.
3:43 You don't really know how big they're going to be, how much of an explosion you're going to get, how far they're going to travel, what direction they're going to travel.
3:53 Point them away from people and away from houses, maintain safe distance.
4:01 Only light one at a time do not re light or handle a malfunctioning firework that could go really wrong and of course, keep a bucket of water nearby, supervise Children using sparklers.
4:17 I did not realize this, but sparklers are between 1,803,000 res Fahrenheit when lit that will burn the heck out of you.
4:28 Keep them at arm's length and always watch kids and don't assume because they don't travel that they can't injure somebody.
4:37 And of course, very important, I've heard cases of pets actually having heard attacks because of the fear that they have of fireworks.
4:48 So keeping the pets indoors and distracted with a radio or television and toys to play with will kind of help them deal with the loud noises that they may not be used to.
5:01 Now, I want to talk a little bit about some fireworks related injuries and deaths.
5:08 I have seen a couple in my years as a death investigator again.
5:13 It's horrifying because everyone is calmly watching and enjoying the fireworks show and all of a sudden someone is maimed, and everything stops.
5:24 It's a horrible sight when a death investigator shows up at your fireworks scene.
5:30 In San Antonio, several years ago, there was a 43-year-old who died, he set off a mortar top firework on top of his head.
5:40 So again, he was having a hold my beer and watch this moment, the fireworks exploded from the bottom and instead of the top and pierced his head, and he became unresponsive and had severe head trauma and was actually pronounced at the scene.
5:57 He didn't even live long enough to go to a hospital for them to continue to try any resuscitated efforts at all.
6:06 Of course, like we talked last week, it's common this time of year to see heat related deaths.
6:12 But also around the Fourth of July, we see a lot of drownings and a lot of intoxicated drivers.
6:19 So these are statistically fairly busy days for the medical examiner's office.
6:26 We're hoping that they are not this year because yours truly is on duty.
6:32 But strangely enough parts of the body that are most frequently injured by fireworks are the arms, which about 8% of the injuries are in the arms, which a lot of those could be burns from like sparklers or, or whatnot.
6:48 But 14% of the injuries or eye injuries, which I mean, you can only imagine from all the sparks, the kind of eye injuries that one could actually have hands and fingers consist of about 31%.
7:02 And that's because they are normally the closest to the firework being lit, head, face and ears are 21% of the injuries and then legs are about 15% regardless of how careful you are, flaws in the equipment and explosives are going to be a leading cause of injuries and deaths.
7:24 So again, we don't know if the ones we buy at the fireworks stands are legal or not.
7:28 We're assuming they are.
7:30 I don't even know if the people that purchase them for the fireworks stands know where they really come from.
7:38 I mean, they think they're safe.
7:39 And of course, this is why there are all kinds of warnings on the packages, but we don't really know for sure.
7:46 We're not sure where they came from in 2018.
7:50 And this was only a few short years ago and this kind of tells you that no matter how careful you are, this can still happen.
7:57 But there was a veteran firefighter.
7:59 He had been a firefighter for 23 years.
8:02 Super excited to organize his neighborhood fireworks display.
8:07 He started lighting about $600 worth of fireworks.
8:12 And the first three that he lit went off as normal.
8:16 Now, the fourth one was silent.
8:19 Because he had been trained and he knew how to handle the malfunctioning fireworks, he waited 10 minutes.
8:29 And then when he went over to investigate it, his face was about 12 inches away from the firework when it suddenly exploded.
8:40 So he was thrown to the ground, he was disoriented.
8:44 He was completely unable to see and because he was thrown backwards, the impact from the explosion when he hit the ground caused a subdural hematoma and paralyzed his rat pupil.
8:58 This is somebody who is well trained, knew what he was doing, had bought fireworks from a reputable fireworks stand or reputable location and this still happened.
9:11 He did wait 10 minutes after, and it still happened.
9:17 Now, I'm going to go back.
9:18 I don't know if y'all remember or you ever heard of the explosion at Benton, Tennessee?
9:25 But this happened probably before many of y'all were born but May 23rd of 83 I was in high school near Benton, Tennessee.
9:34 An explosion at an unlicensed fireworks factory.
9:39 They were making illegal fireworks, it killed 11 people and injured one.
9:44 So the explosion was heard more than 20 miles away and the public and law enforcement did not even know that this illegal fireworks company was there.
9:57 They advertised as a bait farm.
10:00 They were trying to make extra money and decided to use one of the barns as a place to make illegal fireworks and actually employed their own family members who didn't have jobs to work for them.
10:17 No one really knew it was there.
10:19 But 21 people were convicted because of all these deaths.
10:25 This was the largest and most profitable illegal fireworks operation in US history.
10:32 They began making m 80 M 100 fireworks and these are fireworks that are banned by federal law, and they were making them in an old metal dairy barn on the property, chemicals detonated, and the barn was completely leveled.
10:50 What they said was parts of bodies were hurled through the roofs of nearby houses.
10:56 Could you imagine sitting in your house and an arm coming through?
11:01 I mean, I laugh but an arm coming through your roof.
11:03 Seriously.
11:04 Like these people were completely mutilated.
11:09 Basically, all of the bodies lost limbs.
11:12 Six of them were actually decapitated.
11:16 So there were 300 pounds of explosives in this barn.
11:21 I mean, these people didn't even know what hit them.
11:25 They were gone pretty much the minute this barn exploded.
11:29 Now, Dan Lee Webb was the owner and he surrendered two days later, and he was charged with 11 counts of involuntary manslaughter and illegally possessing and manufacturing explosives.
11:46 He was jailed with $300,000 bond and his wife and brother were jailed on $50,000 bond as material witnesses, he got on, this was a, about a year later, April 19th of 84 he received a 10-year federal prison sentence for manufacturing explosives without a license.
12:10 And then a month after that, he pled guilty to the manslaughter charges and received another 10 years, and he was fined $10,000.
12:21 Now, I don't know about you, but I hardly think if you kill 11 people that 20 years in federal prison and a $10,000 fine is enough.
12:36 I mean, I don't know.
12:37 I'm just saying, I mean, if it was my family members and the thing is most of them were his family members.
12:42 So I don't really see how that would have been enough to have killed 11 people.
12:50 But you know, there are incidents like that every year.
12:54 Of course, in Mesa Redonda, the fire on 12, 29 of 01 and this is in Lima Peru killed 291 people and injured 100 and 34.
13:08 And this is a shopping center.
13:10 Fireworks actually caused a chain reaction and then a wall of fire spread about four blocks and raged for hours.
13:20 Can you imagine like 291 people killed the mass chaos and actually getting 100 and 34 injured people to the emergency room would be crazy.
13:36 Absolutely crazy.
13:37 And I can remember, you know, back when I worked in the, we always, I mean, the week of the fourth was terrible.
13:45 We would have so many injuries come in from fireworks and sparklers and kids being burned.
13:52 And not only that again, the heat related injuries just because of the time of year and the number of people that are drinking and driving and just made for a crazy shift in the emergency room.
14:06 Not fun, not fun for the nurses, not fun for the patients, but the most common culprit are sparklers.
14:15 Now, these are pretty much considered a kid friendly firework, but again, they do cause roughly 14% of all fireworks related injuries.
14:26 Now these happen to Children under the age of five, most of them young Children shouldn't play with them, of course.
14:33 And you definitely need adult supervision and a bucket of water just in case bottle rockets.
14:40 I can remember growing up, we'd always do bottle rockets.
14:43 Of course, we were way far out in the country, but they always scared me to death.
14:47 I don't know why I would just basically try to get as far away as possible from where they were because I could just always kind of expect the worst, I guess maybe that kept me safe.
14:58 I don't know.
14:58 But Roman candles and the mortar shell fireworks together make up a vast majority of the injuries to adults.
15:06 They can shoot off in directions that aren't expected and cause injuries to the face.
15:12 And eyes and on top of that, the fires that they've caused if they land in trees or on roofs, I mean, if they tip over or they don't go where they're supposed to go, or the explosion is delayed, or it happens earlier than planned or they just explode when you light them.
15:32 Even the little poppers and the spinners that you can get can cause a lot of burns and I'm definitely not anti-fireworks.
15:39 I love fireworks shows from a distance.
15:42 I would be terrified to light them.
15:45 I would be so afraid that something would go wrong again.
15:48 That has a lot to do with my job and what I do for a living and what I have to see every day.
15:54 I know that I've seen young men in their forties actually killed after a firework exploded in their hand and they have like severe trauma to their upper torso.
16:06 I think once you see that you really don't want to see it again, you definitely don't want to be the victim.
16:12 So I think that has probably kept me from wanting to put on a fireworks show of any kind.
16:19 I don't know if y'all heard about the big fireworks explosion that happened back in May of 2000 in the Netherlands.
16:27 It killed about 23 people and four of those were firefighters, but it injured over 1000 but it also destroyed 400 homes and 15,000 buildings.
16:42 Now, this fire that triggered the explosion.
16:46 They believe it started where about £2000 of fireworks were being stored.
16:54 So it spread outside the building to two full shipping containers.
16:58 About 100 and 77 tons of fireworks exploded and completely destroyed the surrounding residential area.
17:07 Now, I guess they were illegally using the shipping containers because they were arranged close together at ground level.
17:15 They weren't separated by anything, and they were audited a week prior to the explosion.
17:22 The company that did this actually said that they met all of the official safety regulations.
17:28 And of course, after the explosion, the residents in the area which was really kind of a poor working-class neighborhood complained because they said that no one really cared, but it damaged about 100 acres around the warehouse, like completely destroyed by the blast, again, destroyed 400 houses, 15 streets were incinerated, damaged about 1500 homes and left 1250 people homeless.
18:00 10,000 residents had to be evacuated and then also potentially harmful.
18:07 Asbestos was released into the air by the explosion because one of the nearby breweries had an asbestos roof.
18:16 It caused a lot, a lot of problems.
18:20 You think it's just a fireworks show.
18:22 Then all of a sudden, you've got houses burning, you've got businesses burning, you have people dead and then you have a risk of asbestos exposure.
18:30 So crazy, crazy how the domino effect happens in almost every situation or can happen.
18:38 So anyway, I just hope that everyone is being safe, but I wanted to cover a little bit about fireworks deaths because it's an appropriate time of year to do that.
18:48 I know that we see them a lot on New Year's as well as Fourth of July.
18:53 Everyone stays safe.
18:55 I hope it's not as hot and humid where you're at as it is in Texas.
18:59 We have been miserable.
19:01 Sometimes a little bit of rain does help, but then it's followed by humidity that is just overbearing.
19:07 We are staying close to the pool, and I hope that y'all stay safe and we will see y'all next week.
19:15 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
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19:29 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at pushinguplilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.