Investigators looking Into Edmond LibertyFest Fireworks Accident

The Edmond Bomb Squad was on the UCO campus, Tuesday, looking into what exactly happened at Monday night’s LibertyFest Fireworks display in Edmond.

On Tuesday, LibertyFest officials said one person was injured.

“I saw kind of a big explosion and a few seconds later I kind of felt a thud there and I looked and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh what happened?’” said Travis Guthrie. 

Guthrie was sitting several hundred feet away from where the fireworks were detonated when a piece of wood hit him in the leg. He drove himself to the ER where he received six stitches, but is otherwise okay. He considers himself lucky, his young children were sitting nearby.

“It definitely could have done some damage to a kid,” said Guthrie

Tuesday morning organizers of the LibertyFest called in the Edmond Bomb Ssquad to investigate exactly what went wrong. 

“We believe it was the shell that was not manufactured properly,” said Bob Meinders, president of the Edmond LibertyFest. “There’s a lift charge under the shell and it didn’t lift all the way into the air and it exploded somewhere either in the tube or right outside the tube.”

That set off several other nearby shells. Flying wood also broke out a couple of windows in the UCO liberal arts building. The rest of the show was canceled as a precaution.

“It’s much better to be safe, then enjoy maybe a little bit more of the show,” said Meinders.

Meinders says the group putting on the show has been doing it for 10 years and exceeds all the required standards. Still, he hopes what investigators uncover will prevent this from happening in the future.