A 25-year-old Wahiawa man, one of six injured after fireworks stored in a Honolulu bunker exploded, succumbed to his injuries late Friday, making him the fifth person killed by the blast.
A KITV report identified four of the victims as 29-year-old Justin Kelii, 50-year-old Robert Leahey, 24-year-old Kevin Freeman and 24-year-old Neil Sprankle. The 25-year-old victim was identified as Bryan Cabalce who was critically injured but died about 6 p.m. Friday. A sixth worker sustained minor injuries.
The explosion occurred in Waikele about 9 a.m. Friday inside a World War II-era bunker, where confiscated fireworks had been stored.
“Basically, these are the old munitions caves that go into the side of the mountain. Imagine like a railroad tunnel, 15-20 feet wide, 200 feet deep,” Peter Savio, a real estate developer who leases the land, told Civil Beat on Friday. “We’re lucky they stored these things here and had the accidents here because if it had been in a regular warehouse or a building, it could have been much much more severe.”
“My guess is that the explosion, all of the pressure would have been blown out the front of the cave. … This was a company that stored the fireworks that the federal government had confiscated, like illegal fireworks or people that were shopping without the proper permits.”
The men all worked for Donaldson Enterprises, Inc., an environmental and explosive services company that specializes in unexploded ordnance disposal.
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