Editorial: Treating danger as ‘tradition’

Just hours before Robert Abela was being sworn in as prime minister yesterday, a fireworks factory exploded in Magħtab. The timing is coincidental, and yet the political question it raises is not. 

The Ta’ Lourdes factory had already blown up in 2018, with two people hospitalised. Yesterday, two farmers nearby suffered injuries, dozens of homes were damaged, with some residents thrown off their feet by the pressure wave. Thankfully, nobody died. 

And this constitutes a fortunate outcome which is, in itself, a precise measure of how normalised the danger has become and which does not exonerate this government from conducting a serious public inquiry into its causes. 

Had the explosion occurred during a working shift, or an hour later when morning traffic builds on the surrounding roads, would the casualty count have been different?

Luck is not a safety policy. In an electoral campaign in which both major parties’ desperate beseeching for vote came with slavish overtures to those whose ‘hobbies’ and ‘pastimes’ are a nuisance to many, Malta’s new parliament and its sitting MEPs cannot comfortably avoid the reality of the lack of safety in Maltese fireworks factories.

After so many disasters linked to irresponsible practices, the scale of the Ta’ Lourdes explosion is perhaps the enduring image of the threat these factories present to neighbouring villages.

In 2007, a four-page report by a pyrotechnics commission, echoing the recommendations made by a previous commission in 2005, suggested halving the levels of the extremely flammable potassium chlorate stored in these factories. Yet, it had nothing to say about the 183-metre safety distance of existing fireworks from neighbouring buildings and roads, which could be easily impacted by explosion projectiles.

Then, in the wake of the 2010 Għarb factory explosion that killed six people, a new inquiry found Maltese enthusiasts were using highly volatile chemical mixtures prohibited in many other countries, and that manufacturers were often rash when making fireworks. Chillingly, the report predicted Malta would “experience at least one large-scale fatal fireworks accident next year or in 2013” unless regulations were amended. 

In 2012, the Qalb ta’ Gesù factory blew up, killing four men just 500 metres away from the same Għarb factory that triggered the inquiry.

That same commission analysed 99 accidents between 1980 and 2010, finding that large-scale accidents tend to be followed by a one- or two-year lull, attributed to heightened caution. 

It is no surprise that even in the face of numerous deaths caused by these explosions, we remain nonplussed about the fate of those who serve the festa culture at considerable risk to their lives

Of note was the statistical prevalence of accidents in Malta – 2.3 accidents per year over the past 30 years – a serious figure that left us inured to the danger posed by ‘volunteer’ factory associations.

The reason is down to Malta’s love affair with fireworks and its deep cultural roots. Impermeable to protestations about safety or noise pollution, fireworks are an essential part of festa culture, a hyperlocal phenomenon of religious and profane celebration that actually intensified throughout modernity.

It is no surprise that even in the face of numerous deaths caused by these explosions, we remain nonplussed about the fate of those who serve the festa culture at considerable risk to their lives.

No government either, has ever been moved by these tragedies to absorb the political cost to caution these culturally-embedded lobbies; it remains a tradition that enjoys immunity from the consequences on people’s lives due to unsafe manufacturing practices, and the deleterious effects of noise pollution from fireworks. The authorities have a duty to make public the findings of an investigation into the cause of the Ta’ Lourdes blast, and then hold public consultation on safety and noise limits surrounding factory production and fireworks. 

To give in to the fatalistic fantasies of those who defend unsafe practices would be a deliberate choice.