Any July 4th horror stories?

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I safely ignited dozens of fireworks yesterday, until the very last one...

I was trying to light the fuse on the last "artillery shell" with my punk, but it wouldn't start. So, I pulled out my lighter and hunkered over to light it that way. Yes, I kept clear of the tube, I'm not that stupid, but I cupped my off hand around the lighter and fuse to block the wind...

Dang! Those big fuses burn hot! Instant 2nd degree burns on the first two fingers of my left hand when that sucker lit. :banghead:
 
From last year also. During the start of our annual fireworks display my wife's (artificial) hip dislocated. To her horror, her foot turned completely backward and I had to hold her up in a standing position until the ambulance arrived while listening to her scream. To make a long story short it went like this: Closed reduction, (putting joint back together) 2 day hospital stay, ungodly brace and exercise for 3 months, along with the possibility of another joint replacement. (larger ball)

Needless to say, our fireworks were put off for a few weeks last year.

This year, thank God, they went off without a hitch.
 
...was trying to light the fuse on the last "artillery shell" with my punk...

That why on windy days don't use a punk ... I don't smoke, but a cigarette works better when its windy.
 
one of my friends last year let his girl friend set up a few fire works, she put in a mortar round up side down. Needless to say my friend got the surprise of his life when in went out near his legs.
 
Yup, RT front wheel leaving car...at 100 mph

while street racing (in my young, stupid days)....Definitely an "OH, S**T" moment, especially when you're in the passenger seat...Luckily my buddy had the presence of mind to NOT hit the brakes...coasted down and bounced it against the curb to stop....

P.S. Sweetest ride we ever built...'66 Corvette w/ 427, 13:1 compression,WILD cam, dual 4 barrel Holleys, 4" side pipes (no mufflers), 2 mpg(Sunoco 260, highway AND city)...That thing was scary even when all 4 wheels were on it...

Anyway, to get back on gun topics, taught 2 beginners to shoot on the fourth, see other thread :D
 
Great fireworks at the Mall in DC, but the traffic would have caused even Art's Grammaw to use some bad words... Took 1 1/2 hours to get out of the Pentagon parking lot and another hour to go three miles on the BACK streets! One friend just emailed me, said he got home at 1:15 after a 6 mile drive :what: Some folks tried to take Metro and apparently waited over 2 hours just to get on the Metro :D
 
I heard on the news tonight that my department responded on 162 fires from July 1 - July 4.
Right now (1930 HRs, July 5) they are wrapping up a three alarm fire that burnt down the gym at a elementary school (big building). At one time they had four ladder pipes in operation on this fire.
It was reported that it started by some kids playing with fireworks.
 
*sigh*

Our local city decided that this Fourth they were going to forego the traditional fireworks display.

So, my little town jumps up and announces that they're going to have a Boom-a-Rama. For $5 per car, anyone who wishes can drive out to the city lake, where the grass has been cut, volunteer fire department and Rescue squad are present in force and - quite coincidentally - the city has set up food and soft drink stands for only about 400% above the going rate.

If you don't think real hard about it, this sounds like a right proper idea. Give everyone a safe place to worship the gods of Big Noises and Fire, with public safety personnel less than a scream away, and the town makes a decent chunk of change.

What actually happened was one of the most concentrated collections of pure distilled dumbass that I've been privileged to see in my four decades on this green earth.

So. Here is the LawDog Clan. And we are planning on making sure that on the morning of July 5, there won't be a single evil spirit within about 300 miles of this town. We spent a lot of money on fireworks. And some of them may, or may not, have been supplemented by those of us with a working knowledge of pyro-chemistry.

Night falls, and we load up into three extended cab pickups and an SUV -- when I say Clan, I mean everybody -- and we drive out to the lake.

And it is a pretty drive. From the highway there are these huge, beautiful bursts of red and green and gold and every other colour available to modern chemistry sparkling in the air over the lake. Gorgeous.

Then, we actually got out to the lake.

Picture, in your minds eye, an area roughly the size of two high school football fields sans sidelines or endzones, placed side-by-side.

Now, take every redneck in a town of 6000 with pyromaniacal tendencies, and put them in this area. Add a generous dose of the inhabitants of the nearby city of 100,000, who are determined to make up for their city's lack of a firework display with one of their own.

Now, add everyone in the entire bloody county who feels slighted by the lack of an official fireworks display anywhere, and has decided to make do "Out at Bugscuffle Lake."

You literally couldn't go six feet without walking across an artillery tube.

Looked cool as hell from the parking area.

The ladies, being the only of the Clan who seemed to be actually, you know, thinking that night, promptly holed up inside the SUV with the children and locked the doors.

Us menfolk, all veterans and no strangers to bigger goat-ropings than this, promptly spat some chaw, hitched up our belts, picked up our two crates of go-bangs and trundled into the fray.

I should, at this point, describe the crates. Somewhere, Aidan had found two crates about six feet long, maybe two feet or so across and about the same deep. Had rope handles on either end. On hindsight, they might have borne a striking resemblance to cheap coffins, but nobody thought to point that out to me at the time.

Bastards.

LawDog
 
Anyhoo, off we trundle through the field, carrying our two ... crates ... of fireworks, mentally rubbing our paws and giggling.

The first problem came when we literally couldn't find a place to set up. Everytime we'd think we found a decent spot, someone else would plonk down an artillery tube less than ten feet away and begin launching explosive stuff willy-and-nilly.

Finally we got located. We unshipped our mortar tubes, and began wiring a sequence pattern for the first barrage, when Aidan yelled, "Fire!"

Chortling indulgently, Chris patted him on the shoulder and bellowed above the sounds of thousands of pyrotechnics going off, "Patience!"

"Patience, my ass," bellowed Aidan, pointing, "Fire!"

Yeppers. Waist-high wall of flame roaring our way, gamely pursued by two aging pumper trucks.

I'm told that the sight of seven very large white guys, carrying two vaguely coffin-shaped crates whilst hauling ass across a field followed by a grass-fire, followed in turn by two pumper trucks, had the ladies in stitches for the rest of the evening.

No comment.

Anyhoo, once the flames were beaten into submission by the VFD, we set back up, loaded our first pattern and launched it successully into the sky.

Many ooh's and ahh's followed, and we began a hearty round of congratulatory hand-shaking, in the middle of which Conor began to frantically slap the lids back onto our crates.

We were somewhat puzzled by this, until someone pointed out a fairly large-ish artillery tube about 15 feet away. Laying on it's side. With a sparking length of cannon fuze disappearing into it's depths.

Which we could see, because it was pointed right at us.

Brothers dove left. Kin sprinted right, and Conor just dropped flat in-between the two crates as the tube launched and the big red ball impacted about six feet short of our cases of low-grade explosive, arced over the top, bounced again about 20 feet further on and detonated in a beautiful burst of red and blue fireballs in the middle of a group of people who seemed to have been setting up about six strings of Black Cats.

At least, I hope that's what they were doing, 'cause that's what happened.

From the mighty cheer that went up, I can surmise that this feat met with approval from a great many people. I can also surmise that more than a few of them had been steadily violating the "No Booze" rule and were probably pissed as newts.

Anyhoo, someone, whom I don't know, but apparently unrelated to the survivors of the artillery shell/Black Cat incident, decided that this required a stern response, right smartly.

Counter-battery fire came in the form of two artillery shells and a smoke bomb zeroing in on the culprits.

Passing over our crates in the bloody process, I might add.

This, of course, necessitated answering fire missions of several minutes duration, culminating in an artillery shell bouncing gracefully from roof-to-roof of several innocent vehicles merely watching the display, before detonating spectacularly above a hapless Plymouth Neon and bringing the attention of Johnny Law.

With the appearance of the local PD and the SO and DPS, the combatants were dispersed nicely, allowing my family to emerge from our various possitions of cover, and begin to -- once again -- set up our display.

By God, we got off two full sets of launches, and I was just getting into the proper spirit of things, when I get punched between the shoulder blades with a flaming pick-axe. Next thing I know, I'm face down in the dirt, can't breath, mouth full of dry grass, and the distinct smell of flaming cotton fabric wafting gently in the non-existant breeze.

Trust me, I know what a burning cotton shirt smells like. Don't ask.

I can also see, from my somewhat skewed perspective, what looks like a high-school-maybe-college-age girl with a mildly perplexed look on her face as she tugs on the sleeve of a slightly older man standing next to her.

He turns, and in the rockets red glare and the gentle illumination of bombs bursting in air, I can lip-read her say to the guy, who has been setting up another four-foot tall, sub-orbital, ballistic missile: "Baby, I think the rocket fell over."

B****.

Next thing I know, my relatives are dumping the contents of one crate into the other crate, picking my gently smouldering carcass up, dumping it into the emptied crate, picking up both crates and --once again -- taking off at a dead run across the field.

Now, remember the description of the crate from the last post? Now. Imagine you are the distaff members of the Clan. Your male relatives - minus one - come running past the SUV you have wisely holed up in. They are carrying - still one relative short - a large crate matching the description given above, with limbs, and bits and parts hanging over the side because I don't bloody well fit, thankyouverymuch, heave the crate and aforementioned bits into the back of a pick-up and drive off at a high rate of speed.

Yeah.

They caught up when Mat stopped the pick-up at the closest cattle tank, and they heaved me and my crate into the water, to make sure that no bits were still warmer than they should have been. Kind of put the kibosh to the rest of the night.

*sigh*

And we've still got fireworks left over. :(

LawDog
 
I don't know if this is a horror story or not but it did wake up just about everyone in our nieghborhood. :neener: My dad's friend managed to get a half stick of dynamite to set off. :what: We set is off in our backyard leaving a large crater THAT I HAD to fix. :banghead: It only took me a few minutes so I guess this was worth it. :evil:
 
we had 5 deaths... does that count for much?
2 motorcycles collided head-on = 3 (out of 4) dead.
go-kart runs into a 4-door sedan = 2 (out of 4) dead.

other than that, pretty uneventful.
 
Now, take every redneck in a town of 6000 with pyromaniacal tendencies, and put them in this area.
Yeah, don't have to imagine that. Denton County set up theirs about 1/2 mile up the hill from the old homestead outside Justin. We decided to stick around the house and play with a couple of sparklers. The bunch of deputies and DPS fellas milling around the front yard directing traffic joined us for a bit. I tried to challenge them all to a shooting contest, but they said they couldn't while on duty. I think I had the whole Sheriff's department promise they'd call me the next week to have a go... never heard back. Wussies.

This year, the local urchins were shooting off bottle rockets outside. Year before last, I had to yell at them about shooting them off under a tree and using actual bottles. Glass ones. Budweiser, IIRC. I could just see the EMTs picking glass out of their little fingers. *Somebody* (dunno who would do this...) made them a custom launch tube and carefully instructed them on its use. This anonymous fellow must be pretty sharp, because they can ignite the fuse when it's already in the tube. One detonated prematurely, and didn't cause so much as a scorched finger. Try that with a beer bottle!
 
Alcohol, gun powder, an seventh grade education and a complete lack of dental hygenie are never pretty.
Tejon, you're describing most of my neighbors!

It's a known fact on my block, that on any given holiday, I'm generally the only sober person for a 1/4 mile radius. When (not IF) somebody has to go to the hospital for something, guess who gets a knock on the door?

I've stopped answering my doorbell. Year before last, it was my neighbor's friend (BTW, they're all in their late 40s). They were taking turns holding strings of lit black-cats to see who could hold on the longest. The most inebriated of the bunch held on quite long, and got 3rd degree burns on his hand. They wanted me to take him to the hospital, and my response was, "it's 2:00 in the morning. Call an ambulance." Their response was, "we don't want the cops coming and finding Dale's stash."

Three words: not my problem :banghead:
 
Well I've updated my fancy schmancy LawDog Files PDF ... sutable for printing (and framing if you've got nothing better to do with your time :p ).


Anyway ... enjoy.
 
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yep

some three teenage idiots (reportedly) started a bush fire in the national park right behind my parents' house. (see news about Yorba Linda, CA bush fire of July 5) It disturbed me to see the charred hills not a quarter mile from the house. I managed to avoid fear or panic only because I noticed the proximity after the fire was out.


chilling
 
No these are not me, nor anyone I am related to or even know.

Notice the bottle containing fermented liquids in the pictures. Definite Darwin wannabe
.

I'll accept nominations for the title of this photo series.
 

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