HONOLULU (KHON2) – The New Year’s Day tragedy in Aliamanu has left many shocked and devastated. Officials say the culprit was a “cake,” which is a stack of fireworks configured in a way that caused a massive explosion. We wanted to know more about these cakes and just how dangerous they are.
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“Cakes are multi shot device meaning there’s multiple tubes in a cake device that go to 25 tubes up to 600 tubes that are individual shots. They’re rapid fire anywhere from 4 seconds to 60 to 90 seconds. Once you light a cake, you cannot stop it. It continues to fire and will not stop until it’s completely extinguished. This is the problem with a cake and why they’re so dangerous,” said state licensed pyrotechnician Sherry Souza.
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“Once you light it, you have no control. Once you light it, it shoots all the way through. If there’s an issue with the cake and it’s not properly set on the ground or not supported in any way, it can fall over and now you have a machine gun that’s out of control and shooting in every different direction,” Souza said.
“A consumer grade is something you’re going to do perhaps in your driveway. Smaller scale, less height, it’s not as powerful as professional fireworks. Professional fireworks there’s way more powder, they’re larger, they go higher, bigger displays. That is the difference between a consumer and professional grade fireworks. It’s different classifications,” said Lance Nishioka, also a state licensed pyrotechnician.
“The thing we that we have that I don’t see is respect. You must respect this because it is explosives. We respect it. We’re so afraid of it and that’s why we’re successful at what we do,” Souza said.
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