Nearly a year after an improvised explosive device detonated and tore through Cydnee Somera's left hand during a New Year's celebration, she still can't make a full fist, her mother Tanya said yesterday.

"She's doing really well, her hand is doing good and she's just going on with whatever she normally does," Tanya Somera said. "Her ring finger, it had the most damage. She can't really straighten it."

The Someras try not to think about the first few hours of 2005 when 11-year-old Cydnee got hurt and was sent on a painful journey that has included at least four surgeries.

After midnight on New Year's Eve 2004, Cydnee Somera, now 12, told a Honolulu police detective she saw three guys carry a bucket into the middle of the street just before she heard a loud boom, according to an affidavit filed in O'ahu Circuit Court on Thursday.

Cydnee instinctively threw her hands up and she felt something hit her hand.

"I felt something leaking or ... I felt something wet and then I looked down and it was my blood," she told Detective Eric Yiu, according to the affidavit.

Cydnee suffered multiple broken bones in her left wrist and hand, cut tendons, nerve and artery damage, according to the affidavit. The explosion was so powerful it blew out the lift gate window of Tanya Somera's Ford Explorer and damaged the gate's molding.

The Someras' outlook was buoyed by the announcement Thursday that city prosecutors filed charges against two men in connection with the blast, according to an affidavit filed in O'ahu Circuit Court.

Joelson G. Ea and Marc B. Bantolina have each been charged with a count of assault in the second degree, first-degree reckless endangerment, third-degree criminal property damage, and possession of a prohibited firearm.

"At least some kind of thing will be on their record and then they'll be known as the guys who did that (to my daughter)," said Tanya Somera.

A neighbor told police he saw Ea, Bantolina, and a third man standing around a bucket in the middle of the road on Kihale Street shortly after midnight Jan. 1, according to the affidavit.

The neighbor told police he did not know what was in the bucket but wished the men "Happy New Year" as he walked by. Next, the neighbor saw his son, and as he was hugging him he heard an explosion and saw "this flame go up in the sky," according to the affidavit.

After the explosion, the man felt "sand on my head" and didn't know where it came from.

Another neighbor, a woman, identified Ea and Bantolina in a photographic lineup Jan. 8 and told police she saw the pair loading a white bucket "at least halfway" with sand, according to the affidavit.

The neighbor told police she saw the men filling balloons with what she thought was helium and detonating them with Morning Glory sparklers in a bucket. Bantolina told police that before the explosion that injured Cydnee, he had been "filling balloons with acetylene and then setting them off by throwing Morning Glory sparklers at them."

Despite witness accounts, he said he was nowhere near the bucket that exploded and injured Cydnee.

He told police Ea brought it out and put it in the street. When police asked him how he knew Ea did it, Bantolina said after the explosion Ea came into the garage and said "the bucket wen blow up." Bantolina said Ea put an aerial rocket into the bucket, packed it with sand, then placed a weight on it to hold it down, according to the affidavit.

A police certified bomb technician described the device as a PVC plastic bucket containing a party balloon filled with a mixture of oxygen-acetylene gas, one barbell weight of unknown weight, a small amount of sand, small pieces of hollow tile and one firecracker sparkler.

Both men pleaded not guilty during an initial appearance and are scheduled to go to trial Feb. 21.

The Someras have filed a civil suit against both men, Tanya Somera said.

Reach Peter Boylan at pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.