Firework Explosion Nearly Blows Off 17-Year-Old CSULB Student's Arm

LONG BEACH, CA — A series of bad decisions led a 17-year-old student at California State University Long Beach to a no-trespassing zone late one night where a firework explosion nearly blew her arm off.

On July 11, Nicole Salazar clocked out of her job at In-N-Out at about 8 p.m. and borrowed her boyfriend's car to pick up her younger cousin and head to Long Beach. At about 10 p.m., Nicole asked her cousin if he wanted to go to a spot she knew in San Pedro called "Sunken City."

Sunken City is the site of a natural landslide that occurred at Point Fermin in 1929 and has long been fenced off to prevent visitors in the dangerous area. Remnants of streets and foundations now sport colorful graffiti all around the forbidden hangout spot.

at about 11:30 p.m., Nicole parked at a nearby park and jumped over the wall around Sunken City and walked down the hill. As they hiked down, they saw a person setting off fireworks who offered to let Nicole light one.

With the firework in Nicole's hand, the man lit the base of it and it exploded immediately, she said.

"My body took over and just turned around and all I saw was my white work uniform, I looked down and it was bright red," Nicole said. "And I look at my arm, and it's just falling off. It looked like a piece of meat. Awful."

In the heat of the moment, Nicole didn't see where the man who gave her the firework went and she never saw him again.

Running on adrenaline, Nicole now had two choices to make: Wait for a helicopter to lift her and take her to a hospital, or walk back up the hill to take her cousin back to the car. As she walked up the hill, losing blood the whole way, she made a call to get her boyfriend to come pick her cousin up while she was taken away in an ambulance.

When she reached the fence, nearby people helped her over and put her on a stretcher and she was rushed to a hospital. When she arrived at Harbor UCLA Medical Center she remembers being scared.

"I just remember going into the emergency room and seeing the look on the doctor's faces. I kept asking them, 'Am I gonna lose my arm? Am I gonna lose my hand?' their response was, 'Well, we'll see what we can do,'" Nicole said.

During her almost two weeks in the hospital, Nicole has had more than five surgeries and four blood transfusions. Nicole's arm now has a bone from her left leg and a metal rod inside it. The damaged and missing skin on her arm was replaced with skin from her stomach.

To the doctors' surprise, Nicole still has partial mobility in her arm and wrist and she can still wiggle her fingers.

After her accident, Nicole said she just feels grateful that she has been able to recover well. During her hospital stay, she met an 8-year-old boy who was also injured by fireworks, but his arm wasn't able to be saved and he is now blind.

"I'm extremely grateful at the fact that I'm even alive," Nicole said.

Before the accident, Nicole was getting ready to start her second year at CSULB as a criminal justice major after graduating from high school early. The oldest of seven, she said she wanted to do all she could to make her single mother proud.

After her accident, Nicole said she and her family don't know what to do or where they are going to pull the funds from to cover her medical bills.

"It breaks my heart to see my mom, a hardworking woman, have these bills. She shouldn't have to pay for it because she told me to be home at a certain time and I wasn't," Nicole said.

With her boyfriend's help, Nicole has set up a GoFundMe campaign to help cover her hospital bills. As of Wednesday, $1,385 has been donated to Nicole's campaign.

Nicole said she hopes other people will learn from her mistakes and won't make the same choices she did.