This happened in Anhui's Lu'An city in China. Birthday party-goers who were adjourning for the night got into a lift together with 20 balloons filled with hydrogen on Dec. 4.

According to one of the victims, several people kept asking for the balloons to be lit, some even shouting for it. Despite protest from other lift-riders, light it they did.

What should have been the popping of one balloon turned into a chain reaction of 20. The blast, described as deafening, was strong enough to cause the lift to apply its emergency brakes and the lift was stuck between the first and second floor. Wails were heard.

Firefighters arrived to extract the trapped victims of idiocy. What they found were eight individuals with varying degrees of burns on their faces mixed with tears of regret.

Chinese netizens, besides berating the actions of the party-goers, have come out to ask why the balloons were filled with hydrogen and not helium. It was suggested that helium was harder to extract, rarer, and thus more expensive. Hence, the use of hydrogen.

Other netizens questioned whether the fallout of the blast should have been worse given that pure hydrogen was highly flammable. Some suggested that the gas in the balloon was a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen which could have "diluted" the hydrogen concentration.

Images from Lu'An city's fire department Weibo

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