This morning my feed was flooded by news of colossal explosions on Malta.
It seems like a firework factory has detonated in a series of blasts, the footage us incredible and reminds of the Beirut explosion a few years back.
Link to the pictures/video?
No casualties as “everyone’s accounted for” per the police.
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Sorry, you’re just going to have to do the google.
Reminded me of this:
Scary stuff. One of the clips includeed in the video particularly so, as it appears to have been taken from a mile or more distance, yet the shock wave shatters the windows of the apartment it’s being filmed from.
It was a big bang.
Just wondering about the reasons to store so many kilos of the dangerous stuff in the same room. National holiday? A very big wedding? Producing and exporting fireworks from Malta to the whole world?
Most safety regulations around the world are about not having more than X kilos together. Statistically, the material will blow up at an unwanted time. So, the only choice left is to minimize damages.
Malta has a tradition of fireworks, the world championship of fireworks is held on Malta.
Huge fireworks are let off in the villages to announce: “Hey we are having a feast, come on, come all” this goes back to the pre media days and has been kept as a tradition.
Also this isnt Malta’s first firework factory to rapidly deconstruct, 1903 BOOM in Balzan, 1980-odd BOOM again, 2010, yup another firework factory gone stratospheric and this is just the factories high ordering, plenty of local shops have detonated over the years.
Maltese do love their explosions.
Daphne Galizia got blown up as did that wanker who made me late for work by exploding in St. Paul’s.
Everybody though he was victim of an assassination until it came out that he had built the bomb and intended to blow somebody else up…
Thing is, he rigged it to detonate by shock, like driving over a pothole on a maltese road…
Police admired the fact that he managed to drive 150m before hitting a pothole…
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Ahhh, that explains why more than X kilos together in the same room.
They used to srore powder in the original 19th century Royal Navy blacpowder stores,these buildings are designed and built to withstand huge blasts, they have very thick walls and plenty of openings where an explosion can escape without causing too much damage.
Now the Maltese still store huge amounts of powder only in modern buildings, because… why the hell not?
Reports are that the only casualties were birds, some rare owls, flamingos and nesting birds and four cows that were last seen over the moon.
The explosion registeted at 1.9 on the richter scale and it could have been a lot worse.
I see it finally made it onto the BBC today, was surprised it wasn’t there yesterday, TBH>