FIREWORKS EXPLOSION KILLS WOMAN; MOORPARK MOTHER SETTING UP FIREWORKS SHOW.

Byline: Daily News Staff and Wire Services

A Moorpark mother died Monday from severe burns suffered when an Independence Day fireworks display blew up prematurely in Arizona.

Another woman from Newbury Park was injured in the blast and a Moorpark man was in critical condition.

Federal investigators searched for the cause of a explosion hours before the start of the show at the Peoria Sports Complex, west of Phoenix, that killed pyrotechnics worker Michelle Galanda, 36, of Moorpark.

Galanda was burned over 90 percent of her body and died at the Maricopa County Medical Center.

The blasts shook windows a half-mile away.

``There must've been 50 to 60 explosions,'' said Chris Powell, who was setting up his camera across the street to photograph the display.

``I saw tons of white smoke filling up the baseball field and fireworks exploding along the ground. It sounded like the grand finale of a fireworks show,'' Powell said.

Four other employees of Salt Lake City-based Lantis Fireworks and Lasers were injured.

Jeff Fraizer, 36, of Moorpark was hospitalized in critical condition with burns on 60 percent of his body. Joyce Gyorwfy, 59, of Newbury Park was in fair condition with burns. The other two employees were treated and released.

Relatives said Michelle Galanda had a 15-year-old son and a 12-year-old daughter.

She had been in the pyrotechnics business for several years, they said.

Stacks of fireworks started detonating as employees were unloading them at the complex, the spring training home of the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres.

Lantis workers had dug several trenches and set up a big steel tube to hold the fireworks once they were hooked up to a control board, said Larry Bettendorf, a spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

``We believe they were working on the fireworks. The fireworks may have gone off right at their feet,'' he said.

Company officials didn't immediately return calls to The Associated Press on Monday.

Lantis, which staged Peoria's Independence Day fireworks show last year, had planned to explode more than a thousand shells, Peoria fire spokesman Mike Tellef said. The show, expected to draw about 20,000, was canceled.

ATF bomb crews swept the fields Monday for unexploded fireworks. Bettendorf said many things could have caused the explosion, including static electricity, a spark or electrical malfunction.

Bettendorf was it was unlikely that the 100-degree heat contributed to the explosion, although the high temperature could have made the explosives more unstable.