Video of explosion, investigative report released in deadly fireworks warehouse blast

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — As employees recalled, December 1, 2022, was a normal night at the warehouse off Central Florida Parkway.

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Some of the handful of workers were busy preparing explosives for an upcoming show at SeaWorld, while others fixed a truck in the parking lot outside.

Video from a neighboring property captured a glow, followed by a few brightly colored sparks from a firework flying out of a doorway at Magic in the Sky [MITS].

Then, a burst of light.

“It was like all hell broke loose, like it just happened so fast and so, so intense,” one of the MITS employees who had been repairing the truck told investigators. “[My coworker] and I kind of looked at each other just in sheer terror and shock… we knew that nobody was going to walk out of that.”

Three of them did walk out. The videos captured the figures running away, some engulfed in flames. Their coworkers said they transported them to the hospital. Two did not survive, with burns covering up to 90% of their bodies.

The videos and interviews were part of an 800-page investigative file WFTV obtained Thursday, nearly two years since the explosion.

Some of the reports contained information uncovered in the months after the blast. The mountain of missing safety measures that led to static electricity building up and sparking. The results of a coinciding OSHA investigation that hit the company with a six-figure fine. The possibility of criminal charges.

Many of the details were new.

The warehouse was meant to be a haunted house

One of the central questions about the fire was the warehouse’s very existence. Investigators quickly confirmed the facility was not supposed to be housing explosives.

In an interview with investigators, MITS owner Jacob Dell said he rented the space to create a haunted house.

“I don’t have a very good timeline of how it shifted from that into the situation that I saw yesterday,” Dell said.

In their reports, investigators described Dell as generally honest and wrote they did not believe he committed fraud when he filled out insurance forms. They noted he was unable to answer some specific questions and relied on managers to run his day-to-day Florida operations.

It’s not clear who made the decision to transform the space into a working fireworks preparation site. The company operated an explosives magazine in Plant City. Dell said policy was to prime anything that needed additional work on location.

“Over time the warehouse became what it was out of convenience,” investigators wrote, noting the Plant City site was 57 miles away from SeaWorld, whereas the Central Florida Parkway space was a mere 4.4 miles’ drive.

The owner of the warehouse said they were under the impression MITS was using it for corporate office space.

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The whistle had been blown – but too late

Alarm bells in MITS’ ranks appeared to begin ringing approximately one week before the explosion after an employee quit with an incendiary email to her team members.

“I’m also saddened that despite all three of your best efforts, MITS refuses to become compliant with ATF storage regulations,” the ex-employee said. “I documented these concerns in June of 2021, and to date, senior management has not addressed them. Should any of the issues with communication or management who is inexperienced with pyro best practices lead to any sort of incident, failure to meet these standards will be very costly.”

Investigators said the other employees began threatening to quit, prompting Dell to plan a visit to Orlando that was scheduled four days after the fire.

In a text conversation, two of the fire victims wrote about their expectations Dell would “clean house.” Investigators also noted MITS managers came in to remove some packs of explosives from the warehouse, known as “cakes.”

“Apparently, there was a lot he didn’t know about,” David Gonzalez wrote to Lizzie Tiralongo, speaking about Dell. “Like how we store all the cakes on top of each other in the warehouse...and how that’s extremely illegal.”

The surviving victim told investigators she had high expectations for that visit.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to say, ‘Okay, I’m uncomfortable with this,’” she said in her interview. “We were going to have, like a meeting, like things had to change kind of thing. And it never happened.”

Dell did not return a request for comment Thursday.

The on-site manager refused to work with the fireworks

In her interview, the fire survivor was asked about the local management of the Orlando site.

She mentioned that the workers were excited when the manager started, as he talked a big game about safety.

Excitement dissipated, the survivor said, when words didn’t evolve into actions – and he said he wouldn’t work with the fireworks any more.

“We realized that [manager’s] safety standards were looking out for [manager],” she reported. “He was realizing that we weren’t doing things, you know, the way that Universal and Disney do things… SeaWorld wouldn’t let us have a [magazine] on property.”

She said the workers had a conversation with the manager in April or May about the company’s practice of having unlicensed drivers transport the explosives to the park.

Plastic tables that likely sparked fire were new

Investigators picked up on a number of safety issues stemming from the inappropriate use of the warehouse space but focused much of their efforts on two in particular: the use of plastic tables and tubs and a blocked exit.

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One employee said the plastic tables, which are susceptible to creating static electricity when items are shifted around on them, hadn’t been used before.

“We actually just brought those,” he told investigators. “We’ve only been using them this season. We just wanted more table space.”

The employee said he didn’t know who brought them over, just that they came from the Plant City site.

Photos contained in the files showed stacks of boxes reaching to nearly the ceiling. Investigators said the photos taken by an employee before the fire blocked an exit.

The report stated it wasn’t clear if the exit would have helped workers escape from the flames. It could have been worse, though, as the fire’s survivor said the crew didn’t normally work with the warehouse’s large garage door open.

It was open that night because it was nice, she told investigators, who noted company procedure was to work with all doors open at all times.

The employees researched safety regulations on their own

One of the fire victims, Landon Bourland, appeared to take the lead on the fireworks side of the warehouse – but was repeatedly mentioned in the report for also trying to make his work environment safer.

Surviving coworkers told investigators Bourland was responsible for enforcing the all-cotton attire mandate, which helped minimize the risk of static, and enforced another rule that bigger shells wouldn’t be touched until the fireworks arrived at SeaWorld.

“Landon Bourland needs ample credit due to developing the safety [standard operating procedures],” investigators noted as they looked into the claims that there was an overall lack of training.

They said Bourland’s family delivered two binders of procedures out of his car.

In his conversation, Dell said procedures were in place company-wide. Employees speculated that Dell’s visit would involve training them on standard practices used elsewhere.

Firefighters dodged explosions when searching for victims

An Orange County Fire Rescue report included in the packet detailed the conditions firefighters faced as they searched for one victim they believed was trapped inside after the initial explosion.

Two victims were pulled out by crews immediately upon their entry, but firefighters stayed behind to search for the final person, not realizing they had made it out before their arrival.

“There were constant multiple explosions surrounding the crews as they searched.”

Coworkers drove two of the victims to the hospital, not waiting for the arrival of ambulance crews, which transported the remaining three.

Investigators later learned about where workers were positioned from the one survivor of the fire.

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