Fireworks Injure Dozens Nationwide
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Fireworks Injure Dozens Nationwide
DES MOINES -- A Fourth of July fireworks shell misfired in a northern Iowa town, sending a fireball skidding down a street into a crowd of spectators and injuring 37 people, officials said Saturday.
Most of the people treated after the Friday night accident in Charles City suffered minor injuries, a city fire department spokesman said.
An apparent misfire involving 13 racks of firework tubes occurred during the finale of the city-sponsored show, Assistant Fire Chief Dave Beamer said. Officials did not yet know why the fireworks malfunctioned, Beamer said. Inspectors from the state fire marshal's office visited Charles City on Saturday.
Witnesses told the Charles City Press that a large fireball veered toward the crowd gathered downtown on lawn chairs and blankets.
"It was like a bunch of little fireworks just coming toward us," spectator Emily Watson said. "They started to explode. It was just like skating right across the street, and then I saw them exploding right in the street here. . . . In a split second, it started coming at me."
Police in Riverside, Ohio, said a man lost part of his leg when fireworks went off inside his parked sport-utility vehicle, blowing the windows out.
A 6-year-old girl in Bayville, N.Y., suffered second-degree burns when fireworks landed in her lap, police said. Investigators said it was not immediately clear who launched the fireworks but said the child was not at a public pyrotechnics display.
At Port Huron, Mich., a 51-year-old man was critically injured when he was struck in face by a mortar-type firework, the St. Clair County sheriff's department said. Officers said the man was placing the firework in a tube when it ignited.
Wildfires Strain Calif. Resources
LOS ANGELES -- A wildfire threatening hundreds of homes in Southern California spread slowly through scenic canyonlands, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said crews struggling to contain the fires "are stretched thin; they are exhausted." A slew of wildfires, most ignited by lightning two weeks ago, has burned more than 800 square miles of land. Schwarzenegger said the state's top priority was in the coastal region of Santa Barbara County, where nearly 2,700 homes were threatened by a fire in the Los Padres National Forest that has consumed about 13 square miles.
Man Flies Lawn Chair Out of Ore.
BEND, Ore. -- A 48-year-old gas station owner flew a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons more than 200 miles across the Oregon desert, landing in a field in Idaho. In his third bid to fly out of state, Kent Couch covered about 235 miles in about nine hours. His green lawn chair was rigged with an array of more than 150 giant party balloons, each providing about four pounds of lift. The chair and ballast accounted for about 400 pounds, and Couch and his parachute 200 more. Couch brought with him a BB gun and a blow gun equipped with steel darts. He also had a pole with a hook for pulling in balloons, Global Positioning System tracking devices, an altimeter and a satellite phone.
-- From News Services
