Five Dead After Hawaii Fireworks Explosion
A 25-year-old Wahiawa man, one of six injured after fireworks stored in a Honolulu bunker exploded, succumbed to his injuries late Friday, making him the fifth person killed by the blast.
identified four of the victims as 29-year-old Justin Kelii, 50-year-old Robert Leahey, 24-year-old Kevin Freeman and 24-year-old Neil Sprankle. The 25-year-old victim was identified as Bryan Cabalce who was critically injured but died about 6 p.m. Friday. A sixth worker sustained minor injuries.
The explosion occurred in Waikele about 9 a.m. Friday inside a World War II-era bunker, where confiscated fireworks had been stored.
“Basically, these are the old munitions caves that go into the side of the mountain. Imagine like a railroad tunnel, 15-20 feet wide, 200 feet deep,” Peter Savio, a real estate developer who leases the land, told Civil Beat on Friday. “We’re lucky they stored these things here and had the accidents here because if it had been in a regular warehouse or a building, it could have been much much more severe.”
“My guess is that the explosion, all of the pressure would have been blown out the front of the cave. … This was a company that stored the fireworks that the federal government had confiscated, like illegal fireworks or people that were shopping without the proper permits.”
The men all worked for , an environmental and explosive services company that specializes in unexploded ordnance disposal.
