Everything we know (and don’t know) about the fireworks factory blast

Many questions remain about the fireworks factory explosion that shook Malta in the early hours of Monday morning.

Almost a week later, we are still in the dark about what caused the blast and whether it could have been avoided.

With an investigation into the case now underway, we sift through some of the lingering questions being asked.

Q: Was the Madonna ta’ Lourdes fireworks factory built and operating in line with the law?

A: Chapter 33 of the laws of Malta, known as the Explosives Ordinance, requires any factory manufacturing fireworks to possess a valid licence issued by the police.

Sources close to the factory say both the site and the owner had the necessary licence to operate.

A magisterial inquiry led by Magistrate Joe Mifsud, however, is currently underway and will determine if the factory was built according to legal requirements and if it was operating in full compliance with its licence conditions at the time of Monday’s blast.

Q: Was the factory insured? Did it even need to be insured in the first place?

A: This is one of the many issues that remain unclear. According to Maltese law, anyone who intends to let off fireworks needs to first apply for a licence with the police. Part of that involves producing an insurance policy to cover injuries or damages to third parties for an amount of at least €300,000.

However, while people manufacturing fireworks also need a (different) licence, it is unclear whether the requirement for insurance coverage also applies to them. Nor does the law specify that fireworks factories themselves need to be insured.

Q: Was the factory located far enough from residences and other places where people gather?

A: This is a tricky one. The law does establish a strict safety buffer zone. It says that a fireworks factory complex cannot be located less than 183 metres away from any inhabited place or public road.

But Subsidiary Legislation 33.03 defines an inhabited area as “any area in which there is an aggregation of houses inhabited, or capable of being inhabited, by more than one hundred persons”.

That does not include farms, such as the cow farm, which was badly hit on Monday, and other agricultural sheds and structures used by farmers tilling the fields in the area. On Monday, farmers were working in close proximity to the factory when the blast occurred.

A Times of Malta analysis from Google Earth shows there is no such inhabited area within the 183-metre radius set out by law.

The complex was almost entirely flattened

But there is another problem. While the factory is situated in a rural pocket between Salini and Naxxar, Monday’s explosion caused widespread structural damage that went far beyond the legally established 183-metre buffer zone.

The blast killed several animals, shattered windows and broke doors in surrounding localities, and slightly injured two farmers tilling fields close by.

Q: What caused such extensive damage? Is it that the legal 183-metre buffer zone is inadequate to protect surrounding areas, or is it that the factory was illegally stockpiling fireworks, triggering a blast far larger than the law ever anticipated?

A: That is a big question we do not yet have the answer to. The inquiry will need to confirm whether any encroaching agricultural buildings or developments violated the legal buffer zone, or if the 183-metre rule itself is insufficient to protect people from modern blast yields.

Q: What is the maximum legal limit of explosives a fireworks factory can store?

A: This is not clear. The legal limit for any specific fireworks factory is dictated by the conditions attached to each individual licence, depending on the size and structure of the factory, and we do not know what the conditions for this specific factory were.

The law specifies that factories may not purchase or acquire more than a tonne of potassium chlorate and 3.2 tonnes of potassium nitrate. But chemical expert Professor Alfred Vella told Times of Malta that there is another ingredient which is used in fireworks – potassium perchlorate – for which the law sets no limits.

He said the explosion is likely to have contained a considerable amount of this material, but it is hard to say how much without closely examining the site.

Furthermore, Times of Malta spoke to another expert on Tuesday, who said explosive experts use a mathematical formula, known as the net explosive quantity, to determine the quantity and type of explosives that can be stored safely in a given space. This formula is also not entrenched in law, and factories often ignore it.

Fireworks factories end up storing far more explosives than this formula would allow because there are not enough factories to meet the demand for all feasts in the country.

Q: So, how many fireworks were stored in the factory that blew up?

A: We do not know the exact quantity, but we know it was a lot. The store was packed with finished fireworks for three different feasts: Fontana, Naxxar and San Ġwann.

Furthermore, because the facility was almost completely levelled, investigators and court experts will have to estimate the volume of explosives based on the depth of the blast crater and by analysing the chemical residue.

Blast slightly injured two farmers tilling fields close by

Q: What are the factory owners saying?

A: We do not know. We sent them questions, and we are still awaiting replies. But sources close to the investigation said they insist they were operating by the rules and that nobody was on site at the time of the explosion.

That nobody was on site is likely true. Any person, no matter how lucky they might be, is very unlikely to survive such a mammoth blast.

But was anybody on site in the hours before the explosion? That is yet to be determined. But the law specifies that fireworks manufacturing and mixing are strictly limited to daytime hours. The explosion happened just after the break of dawn on Monday.

Q: How could it blow up if nobody was touching the fireworks?

A: If investigators find that people were working on site in the hours before the explosion or over the weekend, the cause could still be due to some human error. But even if there was no human intervention, spontaneous eruptions like that one are not a surprise when it comes to fireworks.

Pyrotechnic materials are inherently unstable chemical compounds, and when left entirely alone, they are still subject to environmental, chemical, and physical phenomena that could trigger a spontaneous mass detonation.

Q: What about the fireworks factories’ association? What is it saying?

A: Not much. Asked to comment on the incident, the Malta Pyrotechnics Association would only say it wanted to thank “the law enforcement agencies for their delicate work. Furthermore, it is offering its willingness to cooperate and continue discussions with the authorities concerned”.

When asked how often fireworks factories are inspected and by whom, the association said: “Fireworks factories are inspected at the least on one occasion annually by a team of inspectors. This is established by law and is always done prior to the renewal of the licence by the police authority.”

Q: What safety measures did the factory have in place?

A: We do not know, but it did benefit from the Arts Council Malta funds designed to improve health and safety standards in fireworks factories.

In 2021 and 2022, the factory was awarded €5,000 for a project focused on “restructuring safety passages” and concrete paving.

The following year, in 2023, it received a further €5,000 for another project, this time to lay concrete foundations upon which to build sheds.

It remains unclear what these works were and whether they had, or would have had, any effect in preventing or containing Monday’s explosion.

Q: What caused the explosion?

A: This remains the central mystery for the magisterial inquiry to uncover. Footage published by Times of Malta on Monday shows there was a fire on site that burned for several minutes before the big explosions took off. The fire could have been triggered by an initial minor explosion or ignited spontaneously. Finding what led to that fire will be crucial for investigators to uncover the cause.

Equally critical will be CCTV footage in the vicinity that might have caught vehicles or people going into the factory or coming out of it in the hours before the explosion.

The site itself might also contain several clues, but since the complex was almost entirely flattened and everything on site burned, these clues will be harder for investigators to detect.

What is certain is that the factory was packed with finished fireworks, ready for transport to various festas across Malta and Gozo.

The sheer volume of explosives likely drove the scale of the blast, footage of which rapidly went viral on social media, gripped the public and made international headlines.