Dresden (Germany) – Traders in the Czech Republic and Poland are not taking the rules restricting the sale of fireworks too seriously. It was reported by the public regional television and radio station MDR. In Saxony, during New Year’s festivities, two people died while setting off fireworks, at least one of them in the explosion of a so-called ball bomb imported from the Czech Republic.
The ball bomb falls into the strictest F4 category. Pyrotechnics of this category can only be purchased by professionals with a special permit in Germany, as well as in the Czech Republic and Poland. Even so, it ended up in the hands of a certain man from the Saxon town of Hartha, who died while firing it. According to the police, the puma came from the Czech Republic.
A bullet bomb also killed another man in the Saxon town of Oschatz on New Year’s Eve. The police did not want to say whether she was also from the Czech Republic due to the investigation.
Federal police spokesman Alfred Klaner from the department in Ebersbach, Saxony, near the border with the Czech Republic he said station MDR that it is possible to buy the aforementioned ball bombs on markets in Poland and the Czech Republic, even though sales are officially limited to trained pyrotechnicians. “Apparently no one is taking it too seriously there,” MDR noted.
Ball bombs are forbidden to be detonated on the ground, but people do. Pyrotechnics are intended to be used from tubes, and according to experts, the safe viewing zone is at least 70 meters. According to Klaner, many laymen mistakenly rely on the long fuse cord with ball bombs, which burns in a fraction of a second. “That’s why so many people get injured. I even know people who have lost their sight, for example,” he explained.
Klaner pointed out that in the Czech Republic and Poland, adults can also purchase cannons from the F3 category, which in Germany requires a permit like F4. “We caught fifteen-year-olds doing it again,” Klaner said.
MDR reported that Dum Bum firecrackers, which are accompanied by a very loud explosion, are popular with German youth from the F3 category. According to Bild newspaper, this cannon, for which the manufacturers state a minimum safe distance of 15 meters, tore off four fingers of a 16-year-old boy in Pirna, Saxony, on Monday. Citing police sources, Bild wrote that the pyrotechnics came from the Czech Republic.
Across Germany, five people died and dozens more were injured due to fireworks during New Year’s celebrations at the turn of last year and the turn of the new year. Due to this, there is renewed debate in Germany, for example, about tightening controls at the borders with the Czech Republic and Poland in order to prevent the smuggling of prohibited firecrackers in the future.
Poland Germany Czech Republic fun misfortune New Year’s Eve
Source: www.ceskenoviny.cz
