Serious accidents occurred in the Rhineland and Thuringia during the New Year’s Eve festivities: two men blew themselves up with firecrackers.
Hopefully it goes well – a man ignites a firecracker (symbol picture).
(dpa) In Germany around the turn of the year, explosions of partly illegal fireworks resulted in two deaths and many injured. In a number of cases, the police suspect that self-made or modified fireworks led to the serious injuries. A 20-year-old in Thuringia died when a firecracker was set on fire, as the police in the Saale-Holzland district announced on New Year’s Eve. A man was also killed in the explosion of a firework in Hennef, and another was critically injured. There were two more deadly New Year’s Eve explosions in the Netherlands and near Vienna.
At the start of 2022, numerous firecrackers could be heard and rockets seen, although fireworks were not allowed to be sold in Germany before the turn of the year in order to relieve emergency services and clinics in the pandemic. Some of it was believed to have come from illegal sources.
Firecracker brand self-made?
In the case of the death on New Year’s Eve in Thuringia, the police did not report the case until late New Year’s Eve, because they had first wanted to inform the young man’s relatives. The criminal police are investigating whether the firecrackers were possibly self-made or imported.
In the case in Hennef near Bonn, the two 37 and 39-year-old victims celebrated New Year’s Eve with a group of ten. Shortly after midnight, according to witnesses, they separated a little from the group. Suddenly there was a very loud bang and the two were seriously injured on the ground. According to previous knowledge, it is assumed that the men would have handled a self-made or modified fireworks, said police spokesman. The 37-year-old died despite attempts at resuscitation at the scene of the accident, the 39-year-old was brought to a clinic with life-threatening injuries.
12 injured by illegal fireworks
At a private New Year’s Eve party in east Berlin, twelve people were injured by the explosion of illegal fireworks. According to the fire department, eleven of them will be taken to clinics for treatment. Some of them were seriously injured, the police said. Everyone was injured in their legs. According to the fire brigade, the youngest injured is an eleven-year-old boy, the other teenagers and adults.
In the Berlin accident hospital, among other things, five “firecracker victims with burns and hand injuries” were treated surgically. A spokeswoman said two people would be treated who would have blasted off body parts. In Leipzig, a man was life-threateningly injured when a firecracker, presumably also a self-made one, was ignited.
Twelve year old dies in the Netherlands
On New Year’s Eve, a twelve-year-old boy had died in the Netherlands when there was a New Year’s Eve bang. Another boy suffered serious injuries not far from Enschede. The children hadn’t handled fireworks themselves, but instead watched a man detonate magnesium powder. The man was arrested. A 23-year-old Austrian was killed in a bullet bomb south-west of Vienna.
According to an initial assessment by the Association of German Environmental Aid, the nationwide ban on the sale of fireworks led to significantly lower levels of particulate matter in some places on New Year’s Eve. “It is a success that the overall exposure has dropped significantly. Many people and animals had a calmer and healthier New Year’s Eve, ”said Federal Managing Director Jürgen Resch. According to an initial evaluation of official measurement data, the pollution of the air with the potentially health-damaging fine dust has decreased in some cases by well over 90 percent compared to last New Year’s Eve without a ban in 2019/2020.
Deutsche Umwelthilfe had previously asked Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) to completely ban New Year’s Eve fireworks in the future. The association works together with animal rights activists and doctors’ representatives, among others, for a firecracker-free New Year’s Eve.