Uploaded January 2025 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Illegal fireworks have been exasperating residents and causing injuries for years in Hawaiʻi, with authorities reciting the same list of reasons the pyrotechnics are difficult to control.
This New Year’s Eve, what had been considered largely a nuisance took a deadly turn in Honolulu, with at least three residents killed and more than 20 injured when a cache of fireworks in a Salt Lake garage caught fire and exploded.
It was the proverbial accident waiting to happen, based on what Civil Beat found when it investigated in 2023.
That report exposed several incidents in recent years in which authorities confiscated large caches of fireworks, but failed to track where they had come from or who was responsible. Aerial fireworks like the kind that went off across the city on New Year’s Eve are prohibited.
Read more: civilbeat.org/2025/01/honolulu-fireworks-accident-is-a-fatal-turn-in-a-long-running-problem
Footage courtesy of Nick Wendrych
Illegal fireworks have been exasperating residents and causing injuries for years in Hawaiʻi, with authorities reciting the same list of reasons the pyrotechnics are difficult to control.
This New Year’s Eve, what had been considered largely a nuisance took a deadly turn in Honolulu, with at least three residents killed and more than 20 injured when a cache of fireworks in a Salt Lake garage caught fire and exploded.
It was the proverbial accident waiting to happen, based on what Civil Beat found when it investigated in 2023.
That report exposed several incidents in recent years in which authorities confiscated large caches of fireworks, but failed to track where they had come from or who was responsible. Aerial fireworks like the kind that went off across the city on New Year’s Eve are prohibited.
Read more: civilbeat.org/2025/01/honolulu-fireworks-accident-is-a-fatal-turn-in-a-long-running-problem
Footage courtesy of Nick Wendrych
