One of the great things about the fourth of July is that I am a licensed pyrotechnics assistant. In other words, I’m an exhibitor and I blow shit up. Every 4th for the past 8 years, I have worked for Hamburg Fireworks in Logan, OH with my friend Kurt and his family. I have always wanted to document what we do because it is about as extreme and dangerous as I get. This year turned out to be probably the most intense, scary, and adrenalin filled fourth of July I have ever been a part of so it’s a great time to tell the story. We also lost our funding so it may have been our last exhibit as well. Dang it.
This year I decided to turn things up a notch so I shaved myself a mohawk. Brittany and I drank a bottle of wine, watched Red White and Boom, and then butchered my hair. In the picture below you can see me “squibbing” a 4 inch mortar round. Squibbing means that I just basically tape the gun powder fuse that is attached to the mortar to an electrical “fuse” that wires to an ignition box.
A couple of notes about this picture:
- Notice the sweet hairdo. I was offered $20 to keep it for a week. For $50, I would have done it.
- Yes, that shell is in my lap, near the twig and berries. If there’s a spark, I’m expired.
- That’s a 4 inch shell, meaning the explosive part is 4 inches in diameter. The biggest shell we’ve been using has been 6 inches. The biggest I think we’ve ever lit has been 8. Most shows put on by small cities and suburbs are about our size. The big shows in major cities (Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati) usually use same size shells we do, just a lot more of them. The buildings make it hard to use much bigger shells. Huge shows on the ocean can use up to 12 inch shells, but that’s rare.
Below is an example of a bunch of shells squibbed. It gets to be quite a mess.
Here you see Will and Kathy loading some 3 inch shells into the grand finale. The finale is Will’s baby. Actually the whole show is Will’s baby. He was born on July 4. Every year you can count on Will making a fashion statement. Usually he wears some sweet tube socks with yellow stripes and some sort of straw hat. This year, he summoned his inner Rambo and pulled out the bandana.
One entertaining fact about Will and all Kernens for that matter is that they don’t back down from authority. No sir. Not Ever. A few years ago, Ohio passed a new law that required the local fire marshal to approve the plans for all fireworks shows before they can be lit up. The rule is actually in response to some hillbillies near Cleveland who set everything up all wrong. Their racks fell over and they shot fireworks into the crowd, killing a small girl. So the rule is probably for the best. The past few years, however, we have had a testosterone oozing firefighter breathing down our necks about everything. On top of his arrogance, he’s a hillbilly. Whenever possible, he force feeds and misuses big words in the same sentences that have catchy phrases like, “get er done” or “fair enough.” Very annoying if you have to answer to him… very entertaining if you don’t.
Anyway, Will has been lighting shows for 30 years. The firefighter probably went to an hour long training session. The firefighter always seems to be on Will’s case about something. I have not been working with fireworks that long, but I have learned that when you put combustible materials near some sort of accellerant, you usually end up with a violent explosion. So after a 3 year slow burn, Firecracker Will finally exploded.
After what I can only describe as a man tantrum, calling the fire fighter a sonofabitch, Will threw his arms up and declared that he quit. In a glorious exit, he peeled out of the infield and disappeared into the countryside. I wanted to capture the silver back gorilla in action, but out of fear, I waited until the situation calmed down and snapped a keepsake of the aftermath instead.
After the excitement was over with, we had to get back to work. You can see below how we set up the show. Each round goes into a tube, tubes are grouped in racks, and racks are grouped into bays. Below Rich and Kyle are wiring up a bay. There are usually around 45 shots per bay.
Fireworks that are not loaded into bays are either hand lit with a road flare, part of the finale or opener, or ground effects. Below are a few pictures of the finale. You can see all of the gunpowder fuses tied together.
The next one is a pic of the finale. We basically light one end of this thing and back the eff up. It’s incredible.
This year during the show, one of our shells had a faulty lift charge. All fireworks are comprised of two parts. A lift, which is basically gun powder that propels the shell into the air, and the explosive piece, which is usually magnesium, depending on the desired effect. One of our shells was missing the lift… we think. It exploded inside the tube during the show, scaring the poop out of everyone. The entire bay was disabled. The tube miraculously stayed in one piece, but the rack sort of exploded. Shrapnel went flying, the crowd was audibly uneasy, and we had a very dangerous situation on our hands. Fortunately all the other bays were in tact and we had a lot of hand lit fireworks to go. We focused on those and decided to come back to the disabled bay after the show was over. Below are some pictures of what happened. Unfortunately I’m so busy during the show that I never have time to take action shots.
So yeah, that was scary.
The finale is hand lit. This year we also hand lit all of our ground effects. The whole process of hand lighting fireworks is pretty intense. You start by tying a road flare to a stick thats about a yard long. You light the flare, hold it behind you and slowly walk up to your target. Pull the cap off the fuse, basically get into a sprinters position, and swing the flare around to light the fuse. The instant you see the flare touch fuse, turn around and run like you stole something. If you’re lucky you get a slow burner and you get 15 feet or so away so you can turn around and watch. Usually, however, you wont even plant your first foot before you feel the heat rush up your back and hear the explosion above your head. Like I said… intense. It’s incredible.
Since Will wasn’t there this year, I got to light part of the finale. We had basically two finale strings. Kurt lit one, I lit the other. So I inched up, followed standard hand lighting procedures, and before I could take a single step, mortars were blasting off like machine gun fire. I managed a few steps and noticed that there were some unlit ground effects up ahead. I continued up to the front of the show and lit those. Then I sprinted back to the finale to check for broken fuses. When you have 1000 fireworks blasting into the air at a high rate, the racks shake violently and there’s fire everywhere. It’s common for the string of fuses to break. The string I lit was broken about halfway through so I decided to relight it from the opposite end. I didn’t want to have anything to do with a slow burning fuse blowing up in my face. As I approached the opposite end of my finale string, Kurt’s string had what we refer to as “a low blow.”
This isn’t a kick in the nards. A low blow is when a shell explodes before the entire lift has burnt through. In other words, it’s not a safe distance above the ground before it blows up. I was right next to this as it happened so it scared me to death. I basically dove back and looked behind me to see if I needed to take cover. I didn’t see anyone maimed or hear anyone squealing so I figured all was good. So I went back and lit the rest of my finale, ran back to a semi safe zone, and admired our work explode in the sky. I later found out that part of that low blow dispatched some shrapnel that pegged Rich in the ass. Lucky he has some padding back there.
After the show, we worked like animals to clean everything up, went back to the Kernen residence, sang Happy Birthday to Will, and drank like men until about 4:30 AM. What a day.
