In a fireworks production plant, a handling error (dropped material) inside a packaging workshop caused a “revolving sun” fireworks display to ignite around 2 pm.

The technician was unable to extinguish the fire using the extinguishers at his disposal; he escaped the building and sounded the alarm, while incandescent projections were reaching the neighbouring containers.

All hangars and buildings on the site were one-story metal frame structures with walls and a roof made of sheet metal profile section (movable roof), all of which was supported on a concrete slab. The fire, which quickly gained in intensity, spread within 20 minutes in all directions, by means of rockets and ignited debris, reaching pallets of fireworks awaiting shipment nearby, then anti-hail rockets stored 20 m away. The successive explosions of anti-hail rockets in turn caused fire outbreaks inside other buildings, in addition to igniting onsite vegetation (cypress hedges) and a field 800 m offsite. Backup was called to help contain new fire outbreaks in the vicinity of the depot.

The fire was contained around 3:15 pm through a deployment of major fire-fighting resources: two 1-tonne capacity pump trucks and 12 tanker lorries used for fighting forest fires. This equipment was fuelled via suction points set up along a canal crossing the area of intervention and constituting a 1,200-m³ water reservoir. All individual fire sources were extinguished by 6 pm. Fire-fighters’ effective knowledge of the site and of fire-related risks, thanks to joint drills performed with the company’s safety unit, led to a successful intervention. No injuries were reported; property damage consisted of 7 collapsed buildings and a few vehicles (trailers, handling devices).

Powder storage areas were split into small distant structures located in a wooded zone that was not reached by the blaze. The high-quality site design made it possible to mitigate fire development and thereby avoided a more widespread accident. Nonetheless, due to the extreme heat, employees had opened building doors for ventilation, which in turn allowed flaming projections to enter into these premises and thus spread the fire to 2.8 tonnes of fireworks. The operator wound up adopting the following measures:

• Reinforcement of the protective features on the part most sensitive to the revolving fireworks ignition device, i.e. of the “hawthorn” type: a plastic design was to replace the brown wrapping paper;
• Closure in the packaging centre where anti-hail rockets were being stored; this zone was directly responsible for the fire spreading and moreover gave rise to many secondary fire sources;
• Protection of building openings by means of a grating;
• Construction of fire walls across from buildings whenever the building orientation so dictated;
• A 25-m spacing for all buildings used to store fireworks, with this distance being reduced should screens be installed to resist both projections and heat radiation;
• Strengthening of operating rules in order to ensure continuous compliance with maximum allowable quantities in the various storage locations (even for short periods on intermediate storage facilities, given the risk of a relay effect);
• The doors to intermediate storage depots were to be kept closed in the absence of employees.