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I was working for a fireworks company back in '83 (Austin Fireworks out of Wichita, KS - they shoot the Niagra Falls show every year and a bunch of other cool shows). They sent me down to a fireworks factory in Oklahoma to pick up a shitload of Class A stuff. Big ass red metal warehouse, all family run, kids running around coated with powder (not the talcum kind). There was this one guy making the kickers they use to get extra altitude on the shells. He looked like the Tinman in the Wizard of Oz he had so much magnesium gunpowder on him.
Anyway, I get back to Wichita and two weeks later there's a headline in the newspaper saying that a "major fireworks factory in Oklahoma" exploded. I about shit my pants because it was the exact same factory I'd just been to.
The heat from the exploding 55gal drums of various types of gunpowder literally melted the complex to the ground and burned a crater into the concrete foundation. It partially evaporated the pond just by the warehouse, killed all the fish and what body parts that weren't vaporized were found hundreds of yards from "ground zero".
Aparently, a couple of the younger kids (8 or 9yo) were unloading a truck carrying 55gal drums of titanium based powder and they accidently skidded one of the barrels on the deck of the truck. It sparked and that's all she wrote.
Several years before I took the summer job with Austin their complex was devastated during a thunderstorm. They had about a dozen semi-trailers used for storage of the class C stuff they sold to fireworks stands. Lightening hit one of the trailers and set off a chain reaction. All the trailers vaporized and shrapnel from those explosions hit the main two warehouses with all the Class A stuff. Leveled the entire complex including Paul Austin's avionics shop that is at the front of the property. Windows 1/4mi away were blown out from the shockwave and people saw and heard the explosion as far as 10 miles away.
Morale? Pyrotechnics is fun yes, but when shit happens there isn't even time to say "Oh Shit!"
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