Children injured after fireworks land in crowd at Sydney Christmas carol event
A colourful Christmas carols event turned to chaos in Sydney’s north overnight after fireworks misfired and launched into the crowd, injuring three children.
Elias Carrera, 11, was sitting in the front row when the set of roman candles misfired and launched balls of fire into the crowd at Christmas Carols at Allambie Heights about 9.30pm on Sunday.
He was rushed to hospital with serious burns after the firework hit him in the chest and exploded on impact.
In a post on Facebook, Elias’ mum Emma said her boy “was out of surgery and recovering” and “has a large open crater in his chest that has damaged the muscle and his spleen”.
The mum said her little boy was also concerned about the other children at the event who were injured.
“He hopes the other children injured are ok. He was very concerned,” she said.
An eight-year-old girl broke her wrist while running from the chaos and a 12-year-old boy suffered minor burns.
“There was a lot of commotion beside us, kids were running everywhere,” an attendee said.
“There were lots of kids who were stressed and crying and traumatised,” Helen O’Shea, another witness, said.
You can hear screams coming from the crowd of families shortly after the fireworks display commenced in videos from the scene.
Witness Greg Nuan said one of the parents who were at the event was a firefighter and helped provide first aid at the scene.
Many families narrowly escaped, including TV presenter Beau Walker.
“I grabbed them (children) and just ran,” Walker said.
“I scooped them up and turned them around and put my back to them (the fireworks) just in case it hit my back and not the kids.”
Display organisers, Howard’s Fireworks, were at the scene with Safe Work NSW today to piece together what went wrong.
“There have been roman candles in the past that have malfunctioned,” fireworks organiser Christian Howard said.
“It’s projecting flaming balls that could cause burns.”
Organisers said the display was shut down as soon as the roman candle began to malfunction.
It remains unclear why the fireworks landed in the crowds, with speculation wind could have pushed the fireworks in the wrong direction.
