Oh boy.. This reminds me of our last Fourth of July party.

Quickly, some geography. My yard is extremely hilly. The whole yard slopes down to the right and it is in a secluded area on a hill, so there are lots of trees around and not many houses (thank God). The family and all the relatives were there for this event, watching our firework show from what we thought was a safe distance (probably around 150ft). Since I had decided to help him with the firing process, I was out there lighting them.

My cousin had set up one of those automatic fireworks that comes in a box with just a fuse sticking out. The theory is that you light the fuse, run away, and the box (being a relatively stable object on FLAT ground), will fire a set of 16 fireworks sequentially up into the air, producing a nice effect. This is not how it happened.

We set this box up on the side of the hill (see above), and figured it would be fine. No. After the first firework was fired, the box bounced off the ground a little, and then FELL OVER. The box, now on it's side, proceeded to fire fifteen more fireworks out, all in completely random directions. Each time it fired one, the box would move to some new unpredictable position. It was also dusk, and a thick layer of smoke was covering our view of the box, so absolutely nothing could be done to stop it.

As I quickly fled farther and farther away from the box (having my senses assaulted by bright flashes of light, massive explosions, and dense clouds of blinding smoke, combined with the panicked fear of possibly being hit by one of them), I could hear my family in the distance creating a noise which I can best describe as a combination of hysterical laughing and terrified screaming.

There was nothing to be done but wait for them to finish shooting and to pray no one died.

Luckily, no one did.

Damn was that scary, but hell it was memorable.

TL;DR Box sets of fireworks are not to be ignited on anything but the flattest of terrains.