Product Safety Commission Blows Up Mannequins In Disturbing 4th of July Video

Mean girls? Nope, just the Consumer Products Safety
Commission using mannequins to demonstrate
the risks of 4th of July fireworks. 

The U.S. Consumer Products Safety Commission wants you to have a safe 4th of July.

Fireworks are part of the celebration, and too many people blow off their hands or worse during celebrations.

By the way, you could have guessed this but the vast majority of people who are injured by fireworks are teenage boys.

Go figure.

The CPSC put out a video that I can't decide whether is disturbing or funny. Or maybe both.

They blew up mannequins to show how dangerous fireworks can be.

Be safer than these mannequins!

Don't Block This Woman's View When She's Watching Fireworks

This woman is accused of assaulting a teenage girl
because the kid was blocking this woman's view
of Disney fireworks. 

In today's installment of totally overreaction, let's meet Tabbatha Kaye Mature, 41, of New Baltimore, Michigan, who police say was NOT happy when a group of teenagers blocked her view of a fireworks display at Disney's Magic Kingdom.

This is Florida, folks, so you have to kind of expect this. Florida people can be weird. And people who visit Florida can catch the weird bug.

If police are accurate, Mature objected when the teenager girls in front of her stood up as the Disney Magic Kingdom fireworks went off recently, according to the Orlando Sentinel. 

Mature's family, who were seated behind the teenagers, objected when the the youths stood up, blocking the view.

Mature "became aggravated," police said. Enough so that the girls decided to leave. Which was probably a smart move.

But too late! One girl told Mature, "You can take our spot."

Reasonable enough, you'd think. But not for Mature.

Police and the Orlando Sentinel said Mature responded to the offer by wrapping both hands around the girl's neck and began squeezing.

Said the Sentinel:

"When the student started screaming, Mature released her and said, 'You dont want to mess with me.'"

I love that this woman's last name is "Mature."  Talk about a misnomer!

The girl wasn't hurt, but she and her mother want to press charges. Mature faces a felony charge of child abuse. She was briefly jailed, but released on $2,000 bond.

I hope those fireworks were spectacular enough to be worth it.


 

Idiots Light Shelves Of Fireworks In A Walmart Apparently Because It's Fun

Somebody set fire to this display of fireworks
inside a Phoenix Walmart.  

If you're in Arizona, you can buy fireworks for your Fourth of July celebrations at a Walmart.

Except at one Phoenix Walmart at the moment.

That's because some idiots decided it would be fun to light them on fire while the fireworks were still on the store shelves in that Walmart.

You can see the two videos of the incident at the bottom of this post. Pretty wild.

Whoever set the fire - and their faces are on security cameras from the store - could face 20 years in prison with a felony conviction for doing this.

Store staff evacuated the busy store. Some of them were treated at the scene for smoke inhalation from breathing all that smoke in while making sure everybody was out of the building.

On the bright side, the flames were extinguished before they reached a nearby display of lighter fluid and propane, which really would have caused a mess.

But the store is closed because of extensive smoke and water damage.

Because of some idiots.

First video was taken right by the display as it burst into flames, the second one is store surveillance cameras narrated by a snarky guy, but still pretty fascinating to watch.

And stupid. If that fire spread any quicker, some of those shoppers and Walmart staff could have been killed.

Surreal Fireworks Amid Hotel Fire In Dubai

Smoke from a fire raging in a Dubai high rise hotel
partly obscures New Years Eve fireworks from the Burj Khalifa tower. 

Every year, Dubai sets off an insanely amazing fireworks display from the Burj Khalifa skyscraper, the tallest in the world.

This year was surreal, as you might have heard on the news the nearby Address Hotel, a 63-story luxury tower, was engulfed in a huge fire.

Amazingly, nobody died in the fire and only something like 14 people got hurt seriously enough to be taken to the hospital.

The hotel fire and the fireworks, which went off as planned, created this strange video:

YIKES! Columbian Fireworks Factory Blows Up

Fireworks factory in Columbia blows up
Watch the scary video in this post.  

It's never a good thing when a fireworks warehouse or fireworks factory blows up.

But it's always exciting, that's for sure. Exciting in a bad way, but exciting.

The latest example comes from Columbia, where this week a fireworks warehouse exploded. REALLY exploded.

So far, there have been reports of only two injuries, but firefighters weren't quite able to get close to the remains of the warehouse yet to check for more victims. Yeah, exploding shells will keep pretty much anyone away.

Below is a video of the fireworks factory in Columbia blowing up. It was taken by a local reporter, who as you can see, was blown off his feet by the first large explosion, and then he tries to hide from the explosions behind a truck

Very scary.



It turns out YouTube is filled with lots of videos of fireworks warehouses exploding, which tells me it happens a bit too often.

The worst was a fireworks building that exploded in the middle of a town in the Netherlands back in May, 2000.

I have no idea why there was a big fireworks factory in the middle of a densely populated residential area. Two dozen people were killed, nearly 1,000 were injured and 1,200 or so people were left homeless when the explosions leveled large swaths of the community.

Watch:

Once Again, Dubai Rings In New Year With Incredible Fireworks, Light Show

The annual Dubai New Year's celebration centered on the
Burj Khalifa skyscraper.  

I didn't think the Gulf Arab emirate of Dubai could top the fireworks display it put on when they rang in 2014 a year ago, but I was wrong.

Dubai did even better in 2015.

And you thought you rang in 2015 in style.

Once again, Dubai used the Burj Khalifa skyscraper, the world's tallest building, as the centerpiece of its fireworks display, which spread out through most of the emirate during the celebration to ring in 2015.

Forbes magazine sets the scene for us in  an article written just before this year's eye popping event:

"While it won't be easy to top last year's extravagaza, which smashed the Guinness World Record for largest-ever fireworks display with nearly 500,000 shells fired in just six minutes, Dubai is nonetheless poised to give it the ol' college try.

According to local reports, the Burj Khalifa.......will be swathed in an LED screen (quite possibly the world's largest) as part of six-part firework, laser and light show that will set downtown Dubai ablaze (visually speaking) creating a spectacle, that, in the city's signature show-stopping style, will use the world's most advanced pyrotechnics and LED-illumination technology.

The Telegraph of London has helpfully provided a nine minute video of the entire Dubai spectacle

Things really start to get good about two minutes into the video:

OK, One More Fireworks Moment: Tenn. Fireworks Store Goes KABOOM!!

Maybe the biggest, but worst and most ugly fireworks display this weekend happened at the Fireworks Superstore in Tennessee, which spectacularly caught fire Sunday evening.

Tennessee fireworks store goes up in flames.  

Luckily, the fire happened AFTER, and not before the big Fourth of July holiday.

There were some people in the store when the fire started, but luckily they got out safely before the crap really hit the fan. 

Travelers through that part of Tennessee had their share of problems, though. The fire sent fireworks blasting onto nearby Interstate 75, so authorities had to close that major highway for awhile.

Here's the video:

Let's Fly A Drone Through Some Fireworks

Now that the Fourth of July weekend is over, we can review the fun we had with fireworks displays.

A drone's eye view of a fireworks display. Add caption

The best video I've seen wasn't shot during the recent Fourth of July weekend.

It was uploaded in May, and shows a drone's eye view of a fireworks display. Yep, they flew the thing right through the fireworks.

Not to be a killjoy, but the flight of the drone through the fireworks was probably dangerous and illegal, according to Forbes. 

The drone could have diverted parts of the fireworks into the crowd, or the drone could have been hit, and drone debris could have fallen on people on the ground.

I'm sure we'll see more dangerous, but fascinating videos taken from drones. I just hope nobody does something so stupid people really get hurt.

The drone, and the attached camera, somehow made it intact through the fireworks.  

Wild video, though. Watch:

Safe? Bottle Rockets Launched Into Crowd To Give Them "Good Luck"

Everybody wishes each other well when the New Year hits.

People intentionally subject themselves to
a barrage of bottle rockets for "luck"
I wish them luck, too.  

In a Taiwanese city, they have an interesting way of showing it. During the Chinese New Year, they fire tons of bottle rockets into a willing crowd, because that is suppose to give them good luck through the rest of the year.

It's called the Beehive Festival in part because the fireworks, like angry bees, emerge from a big contraption that looks like a beehive.

I do notice most of the people in the crowd wear helmets, which is good. But I wonder if a high speed bottle rocket, fully lit blasting into your face is the luckiest way to start a new year.

But what do I know. Watch, and then you can decide:

OK, Well-Planned Fireworks CAN Be Better Than Spectacular Mishaps

In an earlier post, I said that often, fireworks displays that get totally screwed up are often more fun than ones that go well.

Fireworks in Dubai. 

But not always. I ran across a video of the Dubai New Year's Eve fireworks display that appears to have gone off without a hitch.

The fireworks involved about 500,000 pyrotechnics launched from 400 different locations along 60 miles of coastline. It took 100 computers and 200 technicians to make it all work.

This whole production is going into the Guiness Book of World Records as the largest fireworks display on record.

And it really is something to see. Here's the portion of the display launched from the Burj Khalifa building, the tallest skyscraper in the world. Surrounding, smaller skyscrapers played supporting roles.

Fireworks Are More Fun When They Get Totally Screwed Up

On New Year's Eve, spectacular fireworks displays go off around the world. Some of them are truly breathtaking.

Oops. This didn't go as planned 

But I prefer the fireworks that go awry, when somebody screws up. Unless somebody gets hurt. But when things go like the do in the video below, it's wonderful.

Props to the people running back and forth near the malfunctioning fireworks, panicking and not knowing how to shut the damn calamity off.

Happy New Year!