Big hit for homemade pyrotechnics: cans filled with gunpowder and shell firecrackers in Valencia
The USAP of the Local Police intervenes hundreds of illegal firecrackers made at home in the old channel. «In Fallas that is almost a war zone»
Cans filled with gunpowder and tied with duct tape. Shells of tremendous explosive power united to achieve a greater detonation. Casing strakes impossible to control. F4 category flares and rockets, the most destructive and only suitable for professionals. «This is a real war zone. People don't know what they're doing. "It's a miracle that nothing big happens." The words are from one of the local police officers who in the last two nights, last Saturday and Sunday, have dealt a severe blow to one of the most dangerous and least known problems of the dark side of the Fallas: the homemade preparation of dangerous explosive devices to use in the old river bed in Valencia.
Anyone who has visited the castle near the Alameda or next to the Turia garden will remember some of those enormous noises that from time to time emerge from behind the parapets of the old riverbed. In the past they were the classic 'drunken fights', the 'playful' confrontations between kids who used whistling firecrackers as 'weapons' and that ended with more than one with burns and an abrupt end to the Fallas. In recent years the caliber of explosions has increased in magnitude. And the City Council has decided to tackle it through the recently created Security, Support and Prevention Unit (USAP) of the Local Police.
The raids on the old channel have been carried out during the last two mornings. And the result of the interventions can be seen with the spectacular image of the hundreds of illegal firecrackers intercepted by the agents: hundreds of devices deployed on the ground in police stations, with rockets almost two meters high leaning on the wall. Authentic homemade bombs with uncontrollable explosions, and even more so in inexperienced hands like those of the kids who the Police intervened in the old riverbed.
The young people who carried the homemade pyrotechnic material now face fines that can amount to several thousand euros. The intervention is the second of importance carried out by the Local Police, after last Saturday night a patrol located three young Dutch people who discovered almost 400 illegal firecrackers that they were hiding among the boxes that they were selling to tourists. and a van that hid a tremendous and damaging arsenal.
The large seizure of illegal firecrackers that is taking place these Fallas in Valencia is already leading some Local Police officers to talk about 'firecracker tourism' taking place in the Fallas, a kind of pilgrimage of visitors to the capital of Turia in search of the adrenaline of gunpowder. What they don't know is the dark side of this hobby: ending the party with burns or even an amputation. A police officer warns him: "Any one of those firecrackers catches you and rips off your hand or your entire arm."
La USAP de la Policía Local interviene centenares de petardos ilegales confeccionados en casa en el viejo cauce.
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