Three feared dead in second fireworks tragedy

Three workers at a Texas fireworks warehouse were feared dead today after an explosion destroyed the building.

The blast happened just a day after a fireworks explosion killed five people in Florida.

The three workers were missing, Joe Parker, mayor of Kilgore, where the warehouse blast happened, said. At least five people were injured.

“It’s pretty bad,” he said. “We’ve got houses in the neighbourhood damaged, people out of their houses, and we’re still fighting a fire although we’ve got the explosives contained, we believe.”

Yesterday’s explosion destroyed the offices of Lamb Entertainment near downtown Kilgore, about 115 miles south east of Dallas. The company was preparing for a fireworks show in town today.

“There was a hell of a boom that I wondered if somebody ran into the side of the building. The floors shook and everything,” said Jay Pemberton, who works at KTPB radio in Kilgore. “The walls, everything. It just vibrated the heck out of everything.”

“It was bad, people were all running scared. This is a small town. This never happens here,” said Justin Singh, owner of a convenience store half a mile away from the warehouse.

Marti Mason, an administrative assistant with the Kilgore Police Department, said police evacuated an area around the explosion covering several blocks.

Bob Ellzey, chief executive officer of Laird Memorial Hospital in Kilgore, said the five people treated there suffered minor injuries, mostly cuts and scrapes. But he said the full extent of injuries was not yet known.

Meanwhile, investigators in the Gulf Coast town of Bonita Springs, Florida, picked through the blackened site where a truck full of fireworks exploded on Wednesday, shaking the ground, spewing colourful bursts of flames from the vehicle and scattering debris for 100 yards in every direction.

The explosion occurred as workers unloaded a truck filled with fireworks for the town’s July 4 Independence Day celebration. Four died on Wednesday and a fifth victim died yesterday. Only one worker survived after sprinting into nearby water.

There was no early indication of the cause of the blast, according to officials with the sheriff’s office and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.