Rainy weather may have been a contributing factor in a series of ill-fated decisions that led to the deaths of five men handling fireworks inside a Waikele storage facility last year, according to a lawsuit expected to be filed today in Circuit Court.

The families of all five victims are expected to file suits in the coming days against several companies, claiming they were negligent or reckless in allowing hazardous work to be performed when the explosion occurred on April 8, 2011, said Steve Hisaka, an attorney for the family of Justin Joseph Keli‘i, 29.

Also killed were Neil Benjiman Sprankle, 24; Robert Kevin Freeman, 24; Bryan Cabalce, 25; and Robert Leahey, 50. A sixth man, identified in the lawsuit as Tanner Catrell, was injured.

The men were employed by Donaldson Enterprises, which specializes in the transportation, storage and disposal of fireworks and explosives.

The suit to be filed by the Keli‘i family said the six workers were dismantling illegal fireworks in preparation for their destruction at another site. The men were working outside the storage unit on a concrete pad but moved inside because of rain, the suit said.

When the explosion occurred, Keli‘i, Sprankle, Freeman and Leahey were inside the storage unit while Catrell was outside talking on a cellphone and Cabalce was entering the front doors of the unit, the suit said.

The back area of the storage unit on the day of the explosion contained 39 plastic-wrapped pallets of fireworks, according to the suit. The front held 17 55-gallon barrels, some of which contained diesel fuel oil and a mixture of other combustible or explosive materials, the suit said.

It is believed that the men were dismantling fireworks by cutting open the casings with tools similar to scissors and mixing gunpowder removed from the casings with diesel fuel, the suit said.

"The employees used a small pump to move the diesel fuel from full barrels of diesel fuel to the barrels containing gun powder," the suit said.

"The mixture of diesel fuel and gun powder was to be transported to either the Koko Head Shooting Range or Schofield Barracks for disposal by burning of the mixture," the suit said.

The suit seeks unspecified damages, include punitive damages, for the Keli‘i family.

Those named as defendants in the Keli‘i lawsuit include VSE Corp., the Alexandria, Va.-based company with the master contract to dispose of the fireworks, which were seized by federal agents after the arrest of a local businessman who did not have a license to import commercial grade display fireworks.

The employer, Donaldson, is not named in the suit. State workers’ compensation law bars employees from suing their employers for work-related injury and death.