Update | 6,000kg of fireworks arrive in Hong Kong, ready to light up Victoria Harbour
6,000kg of highly explosive materials packed onto barges ahead of Saturday's spectacular to kick off the Year of the Horse
They’ll certainly go out with a bang, but the 6,000kg of fireworks that will light up the city to celebrate the Lunar New Year made an altogether quieter entrance to Victoria Harbour, the man in charge of the annual display revealed.
The fireworks were transported into Victoria Harbour on Tuesday on four barges, where they will remain until Saturday’s spectacular, after arriving by container ship in Kwai Chung last week.
“It has to come by boat, the government won’t let them come by land for safety reasons,” said Wilson Mao Wai-shing, the 51-year-old CEO of Pyromagic who has overseen the city’s Lunar New Year fireworks for 17 years.
Government official boarded the barges on Tuesday to check on the explosive cargo. With 300,000 people expected to line the harbourfront on Saturday, the second day of the Year of the Horse.
While fireworks have not caused a fatal accident in Hong Kong in recent years, the last Lunar New Year holiday saw tragedy in Hunan province, when a truck carrying fireworks exploded, collapsing an 80-metre stretch of expressway. An explosion at a fireworks factor in Guangxi in November killed 11 people and injured 17.
While the danger of fireworks is real, technology has made displays safer. Unlike days of old where the fireworks had to be manually lit, the fuses are lit using an “electric match.” A computerised network sends an electrical current that ignites a substance at the end of a chip.