July 4th--CLOSE call

This year, just like every year, we headed to NM for the 4th.  My dad has been doing the town fireworks show for 26 years now.  Spending time with family was great.  My older brother, K.C., and his family came all the way from Monterey, CA to celebrate with the family.  They stopped at our house in AZ for a couple days before heading over to Deming.

My girlies waiting for the show:)

Max, Chris, Ethan, & Seth before the show

My dad is the head "Pyro-Man" and pretty much has the same help from year to year--Chris, my brothers, and a lot of mine and my brother's old high school friends.  When messing with fireworks there is ALWAYS risk.  But my dad is a very thoughtful and prayerful man.  They never start the show without a group prayer.  In years past there have been small little incidents--abrasions, small burns, etc...  This year the scariest and most serious event happened.  One of the fireworks was faulty--the only way to know was to light it off.  Well, my older brother, KC, and my good high school friend, Jesse, were the ones lighting off this particular shell.  The "fault" in the shell was the lifting device itself.  So the firework did not "lift"as it was suppose to and exploded right on the ground.  KC's friend, Adrian, took this pic--Adrian is usually one of the "lighters" but had hip surgery recently so he was on safety patrol several yards away.  This was on the ground but was SUPPOSED to be in the air--and yes, those are people running away from it.  Adrian was taking pictures of the show and didn't even realize that he had taken this shot until the next day.  As soon as this happened, he set his camera down and ran to help.

This explosion happened early into the show and there was about a 5 minute pause--NOT a good sign and we knew it.  So we were all calling on our cell phones from my mom's house wondering what had just happened.  Everyone there was hit with debris of some kind--dirt, pieces of the explosive, flying splinters from the firework rack.  But everyone was okay so the show went on.  It wasn't until after the show that we found out the extent of the injuries.  Chris was about 20 yards away and just received a blast of dirt and the exploding mortar landed near him--my boys were inside my dad's truck further away so they were not hurt at all.  Here are pics of the damage:

This was the abrasion left on KC's neck

This was where a small stick stuck in Jesse's leg

What was left of the mortars

This trash can took the brunt of the explosion

Soo, phew....that was a CLOSE call this year.  My mom was of course the on-call nurse practioner and so everyone stopped by her house afterwards for treatment.  Just one more wild and crazy story to add the the fireworks collection.  It was a little too close for my dad though.  He is already shopping for the computer boards that detonate the fireworks--like they use in the bigger city fireworks shows--for next year.  So little ol' Deming may be moving on to COMPUTERS?!?!  Well, I'm imagining that my husband is going to have to run it next year then cause my parents (both highly-educated) do NOT do the computer thing:)  I am definitely pushing for the computer thing too:)