Bringing explosive fun into New Year revelry is serious business in RP

BOCAUE (AFP) — Juanito Edora carefully fills paper tubes with gunpowder and other chemicals at a backyard fireworks factory in Bulacan as he tries to keep up with demand ahead of the New Year.

Sales have been high in the run-up to New Year’s Eve, when millions of Filipinos will risk their limbs exploding fireworks to greet the coming year in a tradition that maims many and in some cases kills.

Edora, a 28-year-old father of three, has been working non-stop for several hours, scooping up the chemicals with his bare hands.

He fills the tubes, which are then attached to bamboo sticks with a timing device, transforming them into "baby rockets" that explode in the air.

The gunpowder is also made into firecrackers in various shapes and colors that are powerful enough to tear apart tin cans and blow off fingers and hands.

The health department has banned some of the more powerful firecrackers after fatalities and hundreds of injuries last year. But it still has not stopped people risking injury in making them.

Making firecrackers is hard and dangerous labor and there is no insurance. But the seasonal job lures thousands of mostly young men and boys to the town of Bocaue because the fixed daily wage of P150 is more than they would earn elsewhere in the impoverished country.

There are no exact statistics, but making firecrackers is a thriving industry that has for years augmented the local economy here, which relies mainly on farming for the rest of the year.

"I earn more doing this than driving a bus," Edora tells AFP, while taking a break, his body covered in a gray powder. "I have been doing this for four years. It is dangerous, but it’s an honest living."

George Calimlim, 40, who runs a firecracker store that employs several workers, says a local cooperative lends money at the start of November to fund their operations.

They have to pay back the loan before New Year but he says sales are always guaranteed.

"This puts food on our table, and helps send my 10 children to school," Calimlim says, adding that he takes extreme caution to prevent accidents.

Hundreds are maimed and several are killed in annual New Year’s Eve revelry in the country.

The health department has placed some 72 hospitals in Metro Manila on alert to treat firecracker injuries, with appeals to the public apparently falling on deaf ears.

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III on Wednesday said the number of injuries related to firecrackers, an improvised sound blaster called PVC boga and guns has already reached 173 as of 6 a.m. yesterday — 122 percent more than the number of cases in the same period last year.

On Christmas Day, 25 people were killed when a store illegally selling firecrackers was razed by a fire in Ormoc City.

The blaze was reportedly ignited by a toy gun fired by an unidentified child at a stack of assorted fireworks being sold by Unitop. Other reports say it was a piccolo that was thrown by the boy on a heap of firecrackers.

The fire rapidly engulfed the store, trapping the victims inside the burning building.

An investigation into the incident is underway.