NEW VIDEO | Amateur film shows sheer devastation of Gharb fireworks factory explosion and victim extracted from debris

Four dead in Gharb fireworks factory: father, son and his wife, and another man dead. Two injured flown to Malta.

6 September 2010, 12:00am
by Matthew Vella

1 min read

Via drtryout

A family perished in a fireworks factory explosion in Gharb in the area of Birbuba, next to the St Dimitri chapel.

Three victims are Ninu Farrugia, 67, owner of the Fontana Brothers factory, and his son Noel Farrugia, 31 and wife Antoinette, 27.

Another male victim, Jean-Pierre Azzopardi, 27 from Xewkija. Another two people have been flown to Malta by AFM helicopter, police sources told MaltaToday. Their condition has been reported as critical.

Noel and Antoinette Farrugia had only been married since May 2010. Ninu Farrugia's body was found early this morning.

The two casualties, Raymond Farrugia, 35 - who is Noel's brother - and Paul Micallef, 32 - who is Raymond Farrugia's brother-in-law - were brought separately to Malta by the AFM Air Wing’s helicopter, to be further treated for serious injuries. They were certified to be in danger of dying.

AFM technicians from the Explosives Ordnance Disposal of Third Regiment were earlier conveyed urgently by helicopter on site of the explosion to render the area safe, and assist in the search of missing individuals.

One Zebbug resident told MaltaToday the windows of his living room rattled violently with the blasts.

The fireworks were for the feast of Our Lady of Victories being celebrated in Xaghra on Wednesday.

This is the fourth fireworks factory explosion this year. Only two weeks ago, a Mosta man died in an explosion at the August 15 fireworks factory in Dwejra, Mosta on 13 August. Another died in May at St Catherine’s fireworks Factory in Marsaxlokk. Two men lost their lives in February at the St Sebastian Fireworks Factory in Qormi.

Matthew Vella, a freelance journalist at MaltaToday, was formerly executive editor at Malt...

Joe Tanti •

Fireworks tragedies...more to come??? . Let us hope not.Somewhere ,something is wrong.could be lots of things but the most primary one that comes to mind is the unstability of these fireworks,could the climate taking a part in this instability? I am not an expert in these matters,but I have a mind to think and a mouth to question: How are these fireworks trasported from these places of manufacture to the sites where they are eventually set off? What precautions are being taken in their transport, especially when crossing over between Malta and Gozo or vice-versa? In what kind of transport are they hauled? Are the authorities re the police, the army somehow informed or involved? Are we waiting for a far greater tragedy to happen before action is taken?So far these explosions have all been in their place of manufacture,save one which occured last year if I remember correctly,which was on a steel barge in Grand Harbour. The law of averages points out that it could happen on our roads whilst these fireworks are being delivered -I stand corrected, there was the tragic occasion in Naxxar when these fireworks where being manufactured or stored in a garage in a densly populated area ,and lets face it ,whereabouts in Malta where it is not densly populated? Sometime ago in Belguim ,22 people were killed in a fireworks factory explosion, and this occured in a very safety conscious country where proffessionalism is the order of the day, In Malta the manufacture and eventual transport and setting off of these fireworks is more or less in the hands of a handful of semi so called proffesionals helped by the entusiastic aid of volunteers and helpers.But these "proffessionals" are being I am sorry to say being one by one weeded out by these tragic explosions. Can you envisage a scene of a truckful of these unstable explosives going off on the Malta/Gozo ferry or in some crowded narrow village road?....if not take a look in the TV news of those truck bombs being let off in Iraq or Afghanistan ,witness the innocent victims torn asunder,see the carnage such explosions bring on,and then try to picture these tragedies happening in Malta. The time to act is NOW. Let us not wait for these eventualities.Grand funerals, valleys of tears,photos and films in the local media these we will see in the next few days but after a while it is back to "normal" until the next explosion takes other lives then again funerals,tears etc. And so it goes ,over and over again as it has been going on all these years.When will something very tangible be done ?

Joseph Catania •

li ssir inkjesta urgenti minn esperti fuq il-materjal. Ma jistax ikun li jkun hawn dawn l-incidenti kollha f'sena u nibqghu nwahhlu fin-nies. Bil-fors li l-materjal hu tal-qamel u min qed igibu (l-AFM) irid jiffranka l-flus.

•

Is the material being imported checked? It seems that this could be the case because one factory could have made a mistake, two could have made a mistake, but four in 6/7 months? The odds are that faulty or not up to standard material is being imported. The authorities should check it.