Cake failures?

I had The Strong do the same thing.

This is why I push safety  on anyone around me using fireworks!!!! I personally haven't had may failures lately, but I did used to keep a couple of 8 ball roman candles that had shot out the side, to show people why you don't have roman candle wars !!!!! 

If you check youtube there are a few videos of fireworks factory tours in China. Once you see how these products are made, well its not too difficult to see why failures sometimes do occur!  

I would agree with Rosafi. If the cake did not have any tubes blown out then the cake tipped over fired a couple of shots and then tipped upright to fire the rest of the shots. There is no other possibility given the stated facts. The loads in the cake are only propelled by the powder charge under them in the tube. the only way they change direction substantially after they exit the tube is if they hit something and ricochet. There certainly would not be enough velocity left after a ricochet that changed the direction of the cake load by 90 degrees or anything close to 90 degrees to go 100 meters. This is an issue of securing the cake so it does not tip when firing. I would ask were the manufacturers instructions followed? I have not read the instructions on "The Proud" but most Mystical cakes say "Bury halfway in sand or soil". So this clearly puts the responsibility on the user of the cake to take steps to secure the cake beyond just placing it on the ground.

So this was not a "failure" it was operator error.

People shooting fireworks should understand that there is recoil when a fireworks shoot. So if they can move and get wobbling or bouncing they have a good chance of tipping over.

As for cakes that blow out the side this should be a rare malfunction. One thing that I would suggest is inspect your cakes for dented tubes. Sometimes a cake tube gets dented in shipping and handling and can cause a tube to blow out when the load can't shoot out of the tube past the dent.

As a general practice when shooting fireworks expect the worst to happen. Plan your setup and shooting so that when the worst possible thing happens your crew and audience are unharmed.

For consumer fireworks safety equipment and being careful where your body parts are when fireworks are firing should be sufficient to protect the crew from any serious injury. For instance a number of years ago a shooter was seriously injured by being in the wrong place when a fan cake was firing. It was a Display Firework cake but a consumer cake would could cause some damage as well. For the audience distance and barriers are the only possibilities.