Since the season for consumer fireworks is now over, i thought it could be interessting for the visitors on the forum to have an update on how things went after the explosion we had in Denmark 3 months ago:
Regarding the damages:
- The damages has so far been calculated to exceed 175 million CAD.
- Around 200 homes were completely destroyed and has to be torn down and rebuild from scratch.
- It is estimated that it will take around 1-2 years before the neighborhood is back to the previous standard.
Regarding the consumer fireworks business:
- The largest consumer fireworks companies sales went down by 40% so i fear we will se at least one company close.
- 35% of the permissions to sell the fireworks were withdrawn due to tightening of the rules.
- Outside the sales places there used to be 2 x 20” containers. This year there only given permission for 1 x 10” container which had to be surrounded by a fence and guarded by a person.
- The distance from the door of the container to the nearest home was expanded from 20 to 40 meters.
The rules for storing is naturally also affecting the display fireworks ”business”. For instance we have 2 containers placed in the middle of nowhere – it’s almost as far away from civilisation that the tax authorities forget you

. We have been forced to move some containers that pointed towards each other. The local head of the police department just commented that he agreed that it was absolutely nonsense and there was no apparent reason for doing so, since it’s hardly improving the safety.
I believe the restrictions were made so tight were also because we are having an election here in 2005. There is no rationale for changing the rules for sales places when it was a large warehouse in the middle of a neighborhood that exploded – The rest of the warehouses were not imidiately affected, but will be forced to move this year instead.
My current problem is that i’m a member of the political party, whos front figure tightened the rules
Lars