When Frances heard the fireworks blast on Sunday she immediately ran to the roof of her house fearing the worst for her brother.

At noon he was eating and joking around the table at my house

She checked the direction of the plume of smoke and her heart stopped. It came from the San Dimitri area in the outskirts of Għarb where her brother George Gatt owned a fireworks factory.

Wearing black and holding back tears, she recalls the horrendous moments upon arriving on the site where her brother’s factory once stood.

“We arrived before the ambulance. There was smoke and fire. We started calling George’s name but nobody answered,” she says.

Frances, 47, is the youngest of six siblings. George, 55, had meals at her house almost every day and Sunday was no exception.

“At noon he was eating and joking around the table at my house. After lunch he dashed towards the main door, like he always did, and that is the last we saw of him.”

Almost three hours later George was buried under the rubble after two powerful blasts flattened the first three rooms of the factory. Three other men, including his close friend Peppi Cini from Fontana, died in the explosion. In the evenings George and Peppi often discussed fireworks on the doorstep.

“What an ugly way to die,” Frances says as she wrings her hands and stares at the wall of her sister Maria’s living room. “I looked at the clock at 11.15am today; it was the time George used to come to my house for lunch.”

Maria explains that her brother’s passion for fireworks was ingrained since childhood. At the age of seven he was already enthusiastic about fireworks, she says, even though their mother and father both hated them.

This is the second mourning for the Gatt family in seven weeks. The father aged 96 died recently and George used to visit him every day.

“He even went when he had to let off fireworks in the feast. He used to tell us that he did not want our father to die without having seen him,” Maria says, acknowledging the irony of her brother’s sudden death just seven weeks later.

“With our father we knew it was a matter of time. He was old. But George was just 55 and it came like a bolt out of the blue.”

Maria describes the scene on Sunday as fire raged while they stood helpless on the side of the road. “I wanted to step into the fire and smoke to pull him out,” she says. Both sisters say they have good memories of George and his readiness to help others. They say he was always careful on the job and was not the type to experiment.

“It is an ugly tragedy,” they say, unable to explain the passion that drives their husbands and children to involve themselves in fireworks manufacturing.

Meanwhile, the flags in Nadur are flying at half-mast as a sign of respect for Bryan Portelli, the youngest of the blast victims.

A Facebook page set up by his friends and dedicated to his memory has collected more than 2,000 likes.

Friends had posted pictures of a jovial Bryan while others recalled his work as a nurse and the smile he always put on patients’ faces.

ksansone@timesofmalta.com