According to the authorities and the organizers of the event, there was an incident at a packed Utah football stadium during a Fourth of July celebration where malfunctioning fireworks struck audience members and injured up to six people who were taken to hospital.
AP reported that the Stadium of Fire show which is held annually at Provo’s freedom festival in Brigham Young University’s LaVell Edwards Stadium had just begun when its opening ceremony was marred by fireworks that were launched within the open arena as some jets flew above.
As Emory Cook, Freedom Festival spokesperson said, this delayed actions in the performance for about 15 minutes as injured spectators got medical attention. He only had information regarding one person taken with serious injuries to hospital and could not provide details concerning others or how many more were hit by fireworks.
“We definitely had a firework go off wrong but we’re still trying to find out how it occurred,” remarked Cook.“All explosives were installed correctly before hand and they all had inspectional approvals from officials prior.”
A rocket went over Teresa Jack’s head ,and it landed in the east stands of the stadium before exploding like a bomb causing smoke cloud seen from miles away.AP reports that people in the crowd pictured below can be seen waving their hands towards officials showing that there were casualties while shouting “stop the show” through loudspeakers on stage.
The Jonas Brothers performed after being given permission by BYU police department spokeswoman Karen Ellingson through Provo’s fire marshal after they rechecked everything following a mishap with their pyrotechnics. In his explanation, Cook stated that none among those failing inside would match up even slightly with how huge most of those set alight later on during final stages have been made; these later ones being outside.
Stellar Fireworks based at Wichita, Kansas organized The Fourth of July Show. A company official Andrew Nguyen says that such misfiring pyrotechnics came from repeater which has 25 shots fired at once. “The device broke into pieces and instead of shooting up straight, the shots were from side to side because there was no structure,” he added.
Jack, who attended the festival to see the Jonas Brothers, mentioned that she and her friends almost left during the finale partly due to the earlier malfunction but stayed because the display was amazing. But as a matter of fact, she was just as impressed by drones as regular fireworks in this show which made her ponder whether or not this is a better way to celebrate Independence Day. “It might be time for us to reevaluate this tradition,” she said.
