Lucky escape for Gozitan group as fireworks factory blew up

At least eight people were on the way to work at the Salini fireworks factory when it blew up on Monday, with two of them just five minutes away.

The eight fireworks enthusiasts were heading to the factory from Gozo to finish work on fireworks for their festa, which starts this Friday. A few others from other localities in Malta were planning to join them a little while later to work on their own fireworks for festas later in summer.

Times of Malta spoke to several people close to the Gozo festa in Fontana, who said the sequence of events was nothing short of a miracle.

“Two of our men got on an early ferry on Monday morning and were already in Burmarrad when the factory blew up. They were literally five minutes away,” one parishioner said.

“Four other men were still on the ferry en route to Ċirkewwa, and another two were leaving home in Gozo to catch a later ferry.”  

“Had the factory exploded 10 minutes later, the two men who were the closest would have probably been inside. Had it exploded an hour later, all eight Gozitans would have been blown to smithereens. And had it exploded an hour and a half later, there would have probably been a dozen or more fireworks enthusiasts in the complex, all working on fireworks for different festas this summer.”

Fontana parish priest Fr Simon Mario Cachia said he was shocked to hear the news and said he is eternally grateful to God for allowing the men to return home safely.

“I truly thank God and the Sacred Heart of Jesus that nobody was hurt because this could have been an incredibly horrific tragedy,” he said.

The feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus will go on as planned this month, he added.

Although a very small locality, Fontana boasts of having some of the best fireworks displays in Gozo, but this year the feast will be far more quiet and much less colourful.

The fireworks enthusiasts are keeping the few fireworks they have left (and which they had manufactured in another factory) for the day of the feast, on June 14. Until then no fireworks will be let off.

Fontana parish priest Fr Simon Mario Cachia. Photo: Facebook / Parroċċa Qalb ta' Ġesu Fontana

Fireworks enthusiasts refrained from commenting on record while an investigation is ongoing.

‘Factory was full of fireworks’

The Lourdes fireworks factory between Salini and Naxxar blew up early in the morning on Monday, blasting out window panes and doorways in nearby neighbourhoods, killing several animals in the surroundings and sending a thick plume of smoke into the air.

Video footage of the blast went viral across the world and ended up on major news websites like the BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera.

There were only minor injuries and police said all people who work on site and neighbours were accounted for. It remains unclear whether there was someone on site in the hours leading up to the disaster.

The circumstances surrounding the cause of the explosion are also unclear and investigations are ongoing.

But multiple sources close to the industry and the authorities confirmed the factory was “full of fireworks” on Monday – not just materials and ingredients, but also finished fireworks stacked in the store and waiting to be transported to different feasts throughout summer.

There were fireworks for the San Ġwann and Naxxar feasts as well as for Fontana.

“If a factory blows up around this time of the year it will almost certainly always be a huge disaster,” one source close to the investigation said.

“Factories right now are usually packed with finished fireworks waiting to be taken to different villages. Many of them contain an entire year’s worth of work on fireworks."

Why factories store a lot of fireworks

An explosives expert who analysed footage of the blast also told Times of Malta on Tuesday that the factory almost certainly stored more explosives than safety standards allow.

That does not necessarily mean the factory was breaking the law, however.

He said explosives 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 not entrenched in law, and factories often ignore it.

Fireworks factories end up storing far more explosives than this formula would allow because they need to sustain themselves by carrying out work for other feasts.

This issue was confirmed by another fireworks enthusiast, who said there was an industry-wide crisis: a shortage of factories forces the remaining complexes to overstock to meet national demand.

Fontana knows tragedy all too well

Fontana parishioners know what such tragedies feel like. The village lost several people to another fireworks explosion 16 years ago.

On the evening of September 5, 2010, the village was plunged into mourning by what remains one of the worst fireworks tragedies in Gozitan history.

While the actual explosion occurred at the Farrugia Brothers fireworks factory in the fields of Għarb, the disaster is deeply tied to Fontana, as five of the six victims who perished belonged to the same Fontana family. 

The devastating blast had claimed the lives of Nenu Farrugia (67), the factory owner and a pioneer of Gozitan fireworks manufacture, Noel Farrugia (31), Nenu's son, Antoinette Farrugia (27), Noel’s wife, who was pregnant with their first child, Raymond Farrugia (38), Nenu's other son, who passed away from severe burns in the hospital two days later, Peter Paul Micallef (35), Nenu's son-in-law, who also succumbed to his injuries a few days after the blast, and Jean Pierre Azzopardi (27), a fireworks enthusiast from Xewkija who was also working on site.

The family was at the factory preparing fireworks for the Xagħra feast when the complex blew up. The blast was so violent that tremors were felt across Gozo, and debris was scattered over an enormous area of open countryside.

This tragedy is likely why the close escape of the eight Fontana enthusiasts at the Salini factory carries an intense, emotional weight for the parishioners today - they know all too well the horrific cost of a disaster like this one.