Posted on 07/05/2011 5:14:52 PM PDT by Last Dakotan
FARGO – Police have identified the victim of Monday's fatal fireworks accident as Jesse William Burley, 41.
An eyewitness here says a Fourth of July fireworks accident decapitated the Fargo man Monday night.
Chris Hanson, who lives down the street from the victim, was packing up his car to leave north Fargo’s Riviera Heights mobile home park when the accident happened as tornado sirens sounded just before 9:30 p.m.
Burley, Hanson’s neighbor, was getting ready to set off a second round of what Hanson said he believes was either a homemade or illegal artillery shell firework.
“He went over into the middle of the street, and within 10 seconds of us talking to him, he lit it and all we saw was a cloud of smoke, a bang,” Hanson said.
What Hanson saw next sent him immediately into shock, he said.
“When I walked up to his body, it was nothing but his shoulders down,” Hanson said this morning.
(Excerpt) Read more at inforum.com ...
Is this the same person that wrote “The Christmas Story” about the Red Ryder BB gun? I can hear the narrator’s voice from the movie in that first line!
Was it an M-80 or “silver salute” that was silver, with a green fuse I believe. They were waterproof, and great for tossing in the pond, and experiments in water-filled soda bottles.
[snif] I just love that stuff...
what about the guy who died in new york riding a motorcycle in a protest parade about the helmet law, protesting helmets, while not wearing a helmet, he hits the brakes, fishtails, and goes over the handlebars...hits his head and dies.
That’s a good candidate for the darwin award too.
Shepherd's chapter on the Independence Day festivities was also made into a low-budget PBS film, titled The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters (YouTube link). Different casting of many of the same characters, but the same narration by the author.
The Great American Fourth of July and Other Disasters
IIRC, the silver salutes had a fuse at the end, rather than sticking out of the midsection like an M-80. Been a *long* time since I last saw one, though. Both had that waterproof green cannon fuse.
I don't think so. The idiot in question was 41 so he 's had plenty of time to spawn a crowd of junior idiots. You get a Darwin award if you kill yourself before you procreate.
My brother tried to throw a cherry bomb out a car window and it fell back between his legs. Blew a hole in his pants, a hole in the seat, and took a little hide off his thigh. A little higher and he would be a soprano.
We all deserve to be dead for our stupidity.
Thanks - I’ll have to look had those links when I have the time. And I guess the ones I’m remembering are the M-80s. And yes - we sure were fortunate to have survived our childhoods with our lives (or at least our digits and both eyes).
I was just telling my kids how often we do stupid stuff without thinking of the consequences. And hopefully all we get is some teasing from our friends or being grounded by our parents.
Burley’s family remembered Jesse as a good-hearted kid, who would do anything for anybody, said Asplin, his stepfather and boss at Chuck’s Sandjacking in Fargo.
Jesse Burley had a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old son who were not at his residence at the time of the accident.
Fargo police recovered a third firework device in Burley’s home on Tuesday and a metal pipe near the accident site at the 3500 block of Kelley Street North that was reportedly used as a mortar to launch shells.
http://www.grandforksherald.com/event/article/id/208805/
Fireworks Death
Fargo, ND (WDAY TV) - Police say they are confident that a North Fargo man killed by a firework had obtained them illegally. 41-year-old Jesse Burley was lighting his second commercial-grade firework of the night when witnesses say he was decapitated.
41-year-old Jesse Burley was lighting his second commercial-grade firework of the night when witnesses say he was decapitated. The accident happened in the Riviera Heights mobile home park, in the 3500 block of Kelly Street.
Police say the victim suffered from massive head trama. They are investigating whether or not Burley had a license to light commercial fireworks that are only available with permission from the state.
http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/48714/publisher_ID/29/
Nothing sold legally today comes even close to the firepower of the M-80s, Cherry Bombs, Silver Salutes, etc. sold before 1966.
From an article at Bob Weaver’s FireworksLand.com site...
http://fireworksland.com/html/m80.html
Excerpts:
There is endless confusion over the terms “M-80” and “Cherry Bomb” in the United States. I recently heard from a high school principal in Illinois about two students that were caught in his school with “M-88” and “M-90” firecrackers, but they were the legal kind sold in fireworks stores. The local law enforcement was trying to tell the principal that these were more powerful than M-80s, which is not true. The “M-88” and “M-90” firecrackers sold in stores are ordinary, legal, 50 mg. firecrackers, with only 1/50th of the amount of powder in them that a true M-80 has in it.
I also read or hear about statements comparing an M-80 to a “quarter stick of dynamite” or similar exaggerations. Wrong. To begin with, a “quarter stick” of dynamite has 35 grams of pyrotechnic content, while a true M-80 has just under 3 grams. So even if they had a same chemical composition, an M-80 would have less than 10% of the power of a quarter stick of dynamite. But the composition in dynamite (which varies widely) is a high explosive, while the chemical composition in an M-80 (so-called “flash powder”) is a low explosive, at least from a scientific standpoint. So really there is no legitimate way to compare an M-80 with a quarter stick of dynamite.
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Real “M-80s” and real “cherry bombs” are illegal in the United States. They have been illegal in the U.S. since the year 1966. The reason they are illegal is because the U.S. Congress passed a law in 1966, called the “Child Protection Act” which specifically made them illegal. It is illegal to sell, possess or use them anywhere within the United States jurisdiction.
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A true, bonafide M-80 is a firecracker designed for military use as a “gunfire simulator.” One specification calls for a tube that is 1.5 inches long, 9/16th of an inch in diameter, with a fuse coming out the side rather than the end, and containing 45 grains of a specific pyrotechnic composition. (A “grain” is a unit of weight measurement equal to 64.799 milligrams.) So a true M-80 contains about 2,916 milligrams, or just under 3 grams of a specific type of pyrotechnic composition.
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A true Cherry Bomb is a relatively spherical firecracker, typically 3/4 inch in diameter, with an outer coating of sawdust bound with sodium silicate and dyed red. These are not as powerful as a true M-80. Both M-80s and “Cherry Bombs” are illegal in the United States, so don’t buy them even if you encounter them.
Up until 1966, large firecrackers such as M-80s and cherry bombs were legal in the United States, and anyone could buy them and shoot them off. If you look through old fireworks catalogs from the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s, you will see these and even larger firecrackers advertised, all of them perfectly legal at that time. But it all ended in 1966. The Child Protection Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in 1966, specifically banned these devices. In 1976, the federal regulations were rewritten specifying a limit of 50 milligrams of pyrotechnic composition for any firecracker sold to the public in the United States, and that limit is still in effect today. It doesn’t matter what they look like or what they are shaped like - ground firecrackers can only contain 50 milligrams of pyrotechnic content per cracker. (Aerial “reports,” which are contained within aerial devices such as rockets and shells, can contain up to 129.6 milligrams of composition per report.)
The legitimate fireworks market today includes some “novelty” firecrackers called “M-60”, “M-70”, “M-88”, “M-90” and so on. These are not M-80s, they are regular 50 milligram firecrackers made to look like M-80s or “Silver Salutes,” another old type of firecracker now banned. These novelty firecrackers are legal to sell to the public, in states that allow firecrackers, because they contain no more than 50 milligrams of pyrotechnic content. They are nowhere near as powerful as a true M-80 or a true cherry bomb. The names used for these (”M-60”, “M-70”, “M-88”, “M-90” and so on) are basically meaningless marketing gimmicks.
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It is unfair to the legitimate fireworks industry that statistics on injuries caused by these illegal, banned devices are often lumped in together with statistics on injuries related to legal fireworks, thus making legitimate, legal fireworks seem far more dangerous than they actually are. This is a tactic used by anti-fireworks activists in an attempt to influence public laws and regulations over legal fireworks. It is nothing for them to make an argument against the sales of fireworks to the public by quoting injury statistics that include injuries for illegal devices as well. Typically when quoting such statistics, they do not make the distinction between legal and illegal devices or bother to separate out the injury rates for illegal ones from legal ones, because that would greatly weaken their argument against allowing legal fireworks to be sold.
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