Introduction:
The recent fatal accident involving Tad Kolwicz was a harsh reminder of the potential we all face when things go wrong. For those who may be reading this at a future date when the details of this incident have faded into the past, Tad was working in his garage based fireworks shop when an explosion occurred, which blew up the garage and burned Tad so severely that he died after being taken to the hospital. Tad was a rather well known pyro hobbyist who did not build anything on a grand scale. He was not a flash junkie and favored smaller shells in the 4" range. He was a Passfire subscriber and participated in many forums, thus he was not suffering from a lack of information. These facts are what made Tads accident so haunting. If Tad was cautious, informed and not a reckless bomb maker, how could this happen?
When I first heard of Tad's accident, I wondered not if it was something I wrote about in Passfire that might have contributed to the accident, but rather if it was something I didn't write about but should have. Some basic safety information that just never made it into print which might have saved him. While safety tips are scattered throughout the various articles in addition to the accident analysis articles that have been written, there is no single comprehensive article someone could use as a starting point to guide them through the most common hazards of this hobby. That is the goal of this article, which is dedicated to the memory of Tad Kolwicz in the hopes that it may help prevent similar accidents in the future.
The safety tips given here are divided into three areas: containment, prevention and preparedness. Containment involves designing your work area and methods in a way that minimizes damage when an accident does occur. Prevention involves methods that lower the probability of an accident occurring in the first place. Preparedness means being ready for the worst if something goes wrong.
