http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/engla......9986.stm

Nothing much can be said about this.
It saddens me that this sort of thing still happens.
Someones negligence and incompetence leads to the death of a child.
It should never have occured.
Gwyd

This is really tragic.

I would like to know, however, more details, since the description of the accident is a little unclear.

Alcohol-based inflammable liquid was laid across the front of the dance floor.
"This produced a wall of flame of about 18 inches to two feet high which I would imagine extinguished after about 10 to 15 seconds. At that point there was no problem."
"It was then repeated and it was at this point there was a massive explosion and the fireballs produced into the audience, and it was this time that there was total chaos and that people suffered their injuries."

It would be my guess that after the initial flame wall, they attempted to do it again, but that not all of the previous flames were out when they poured whatever they were using down. It would backdraft uncontrolably and most likely, they would drop the bottle into the flames causing the fireball.
Just a guess, but it would work with the given description, and have potentially horriffic results.
Gwyd

What a tragic state of affairs! So sad.

I'll keep an eye on the news tonight and see if they explain it any more than they have on the site.

I really hate hearing about these kinds of tragedies. It makes my blood boil when I read about a performer that obviously wasn't making safety thier #1. And I hear too many stories of idiots without training pulling this kind of crap.
How close was this jerk to the audience? How close was the fire to his fuel? Where were his spotters? the fire extinguisher?
It sounds like what gwyd guessed is probably what occured... fire balls don't just occur without backdrafting or adding fuel to a light fire.
Grrr...
sorry I'm just so mad that a poor child died a horrific death because of some guy's negligence.

One of the biggest difficulties with a thing like this, is that there's a lot we try to read into it, when we just don't have the information that would educate us better. The person who wrote the article, did the best (s)he could, but doesn't understand the same things we do. So the questions answered, are not the ones we want to know about.

Our guesses about what happened, are only at the end of a line of stories.

I found two other articles covering this story...
There seems to be a problem with getting the real story of what actually happened.
Huge differences in the stories...
http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1123962006

And this article here says it wasn't a fire eater and that earlier reports have been dicounted.
http://www.cumberland-news.co.uk/news/vi......d=397121