New Year firework disasters

It now seems that sparklers being carried too close to the ceiling was the cause of the New Year fire in the Swiss ski resort of Crans-Montana.  At least 40 people are thought to have been killed in the blaze in a bar.

Fireworks have been involved in a number of New Year accidents. On the first day of 2001, 350 young people had packed into three cafes in a building in the picturesque Dutch fishing village of Volendam, when sparklers set fire to ceiling decorations that had not been treated with flame retardants. 14 people died. 

One of the deadliest firework accidents ever happened in the run-up to the next New Year celebrations. The narrow streets of the Mesa Redonda shopping area in Peru's capital, Lima, were lined with wood and adobe buildings, and on 29 December 2001, hundreds had flocked there to buy fireworks for New Year.

Many traders were selling, and the ground was covered with gunpowder that had fallen from fireworks being unloaded. Witnesses said the blaze started as one trader was demonstrating his wares. It spread rapidly, destroying five blocks in a few minutes, and killing nearly 300 people. 

For more on firework accidents, see my book A History of Fireworks from their Origins to the Present Day. (Reaktion Books)

Japanese newspaper explores my 'Fireworks' history

I've just been interviewed about my book, A History of Fireworks from their Origins to the Present Day (Reaktion) by the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan's leading newspapers. The article focuses on New Year celebrations.  https://www.asahi.com/articles/ASTDK54G1TDKUHBI006M.html

Brexitwatch: a low, dishonest decade

Four years of Brexit madness has distracted me, and the end of the 2010s has rather caught me on the hop, but we are indeed just a day or so away from the end of the second decade of the 21st Century.

As I try to look back on the last 10 years, a poem by W.H. Auden keeps coming to mind:

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade

Auden wrote it in 1939.