A faulty firework is the cause of a frightening display at the 4th of July celebration in West Burlington, Iowa Wednesday night. For Richard Johnson and his family, the West Burlington 4th of July celebration started out as a good time.
"The town had a festival all day. there was stage back there with dancing and music, there was several thousand people out here."
The day turned into night, organizers shut off the downtown lights, turned down the music -- everyone in anticipation of a fireworks show.
"The show was good, we had probably three or four minutes of the regular fireworks show and the explosion occurred," said Johnson.
"It started detonating right on the ground, everything was exploding right there. We were seeing people dive out of the way."
Tom Walz coordinated the 4th of July show and he wasn't expecting it to end with injuries.
"I've been doing this since I was eighteen -- and I'm 64 now -- and this is THE first time -- and I do 20 shows a year," said Walz.
"A spark got into the four inch container and caused 30 or 40 shells in that container to blow up. And a smaller sized container to blow up."
Four people did suffer minor burns, but Walz says it could have been a lot worse.
"Anytime you got pyro and it goes up in major quantities like that -- the circumstances could have been very bad."
Walz says it's not luck but good training that truly saved lives.
"As soon as it started to blow, all the people around that were working immediately started running, just exactly what they're supposed to do."
But even the most frightening of fireworks displays can't keep Johnson and his family away for too long.
"We'll go again. I've been watching them all my life this is the first time anything has happened so the odds of it happening are small."
