Trena Martin isn’t sure whether she should consider herself the unfortunate victim of a one-in-a-million fireworks accident, or extremely lucky.
That she’s still in the hospital, nearly a week after the Independence Day incident, is beside the point, she said.
“We had five kids with us when this happened, most of them had been sitting near me or sitting on me at one point or another,” Martin said from her Allen County Hospital bed. “I don’t know how it managed to miss every one of them.”
THE ACCIDENT happened about 10 p.m. Wednesday, and as fate would have it, occurred on the last piece of fireworks of the night.
James Jacobs, Martin’s fiance, was helping oversee the family’s fireworks display at a friend’s house on the northwest outskirts of town.
The house, along Holiday Lane, technically is outside Iola’s city limits, and thus was not subject to the city’s new fireworks ordinances.
But that didn’t matter to Martin and Jacobs, who inspected each of the fireworks to ensure their safety.
Martin’s son, Jacobs’ daughter and three other youngsters took turns lighting fuses, with Jacobs nearby, to ensure each shot was a safe one.
“I’d never been burned, but I was after the kids all day to make sure they were staying safe,” Martin recalled.
The fateful piece was a “Kaleidoscope,” a cylindrical-shaped firework designed to shoot eight flaming, sparking balls — one at a time — into the sky.
“It was our last display of the night,” Martin said.
But as the fuse was lighted, the cylinder tipped onto its side, pointing away from the family.
The force of the first shot caused the cylinder to flip into the opposite direction, pointing directly at Martin and the youngsters.
“We didn’t realize it at first,” Jacobs said. “We were just watching.”
The second flaming projectile missed Martin but struck the back of her lawn chair, deflecting onto her back.
