Thursday, July 4, 2002

Boom Town

Pyrotechnicians fan the flames of their love for fireworks, and the audience basks in the glow of their labor.

David Werts reacts in appreciation to the fireworks display off The Pier in St. Petersburg. PHOTO STORY >>

CENTRAL AVENUE–You know, you can have it one way or the other: sit back, relax, eat a hot dog, and enjoy the show. Or get up close, light the fuses, hit the dirt and become the show.

For both the audience in Straub Park and the pyrotechnicians on The Pier, St. Petersburg’s Fourth of July fireworks show is about tradition and celebration. The audience can relax and enjoy the show, but for the pyrotechnicians, the 22 minutes will be a mad scramble.

They maintain, though, that they have the best seats in the house.

"This is the best view," Amanda Burns, 19, says. "Right here." She’s standing on a desolate spit of land that juts out of The Pier in St. Petersburg, surrounded by rows of ominous black tubes pointed skyward.

Amanda Burns and her coworkers take shelter from the rain and prepare explosives for the fireworks. The tarp is more for the fireworks than for them.

Burns got pulled into fireworks by a friend. This is a theme among pyrotechnicians.

David Moore, 47, did his first show at age 15 in his tiny hometown of Wadsworth, Ohio. For Moore, it was a neighbor who drew him into the world of pyrotechnics. He makes his money as a flooring designer, but his "professional hobby" is pyrotechnics.

For a hobby, it’s hard work. The crew must arrive at 9 a.m. and work nonstop until 4 p.m. Then they guard the fireworks against rain until 9 p.m. With cleanup until midnight, it’s a 15-hour day.

That’s nothing Moore can’t handle, though, even at 47. "All these 18-year-old young bucks? I can run ’em into the ground!" he says, and laughs.

One of those young bucks is Andrew Harriman. Forget getting pulled in by friends: fireworks is in Harriman’s blood. His parents spent their honeymoon setting off fireworks--literally. His father, a doctor, was once the only doctor in the United States to also be a licensed pyrotechnician.

A bit of an old pro at 18, Harriman is just hoping everything goes off without a hitch. "I’m hopin’ everything goes well, not just for us, but that everyone responds well to it," he says.

Pyrotechnicians bury the plastic fireworks canisters deep in the ground to minimize the damage if they explode.

Across the water, under the shade of a tree in Straub Park, David and Linda Werts are waiting. They arrived here at 7:45 a.m. looking forward to a picnic lunch, a picnic dinner and a good show. This is their eighth year here in a row.

John Adams wrote that the independence of the United States ought to be commemorated with "…illuminations from one end of this continent to the other." All across Straub Park, families and friends sit on blankets, awaiting illumination, but opinions are mixed as to the significance of the pyrotechnician’s toil.

At left, Lisa Profita and her brother, Jimmy Profita, on the far right, chat with their friends while waiting for the firework show.

"It’s just tradition," Lisa Profita says. She sits at the edge of the water with her brother and their friends. They are young, hip and from Tampa.

"It’s our independence," Jimmy Profita chimes in. "It represents the war."

"You know--‘bombs bursting in air’?" their friend Lynn Terry says from across the blanket.

Lisa Profita nods. "It’s tied into our national anthem."

Some see a more intentional role for the fireworks.

Rafaela Lamorte sits in a lawn chair beside her sister Josephine. They’re keeping an eye out for the return of their husbands and children, who are out riding a rented bicycle-car. Rafaela thinks Americans light fireworks on the Fourth of July "so everybody, even if they can’t make it out, can see it in the sky."

Josephine Lamorte agrees. "How else can you celebrate it for all to see?"

At 9 p.m., the sky is clear. The Florida boy-band trio Phaze 3 finishes a patriotic medley. "God bless you all," they say. "God bless America. God bless St. Petersburg!"

Then, the crowd whoops as the first round of fireworks spirals up into the sky.

The flying charges detonate in flashes of blue, green, red, purple and gold. Some explode so big and so fast that they blast drops of light down into the water. The shimmering shrapnel disappears behind the shadows of sailboats bobbing in the water.

Beyond the boats, dots of red light--the pyrotechnician’s starter flares--dance across on the smoke-wreathed spit of land. Where they touch, the ground erupts in smoke and flame. It looks like a devil’s playground. Beneath a pillar of smoke, the pyrotechnicians are hard at work.

Amanda Burns, David Moore, Andrew Harriman and a dozen others are dashing back and forth. When they touch their flare to each 3-inch fuse, they have just two seconds to jump away before a firework rockets up out of its plastic launching tube in a column of fire. Then it’s back for the next one.

"Oh, it’s loud," Amanda Burns says, and grins.

The concussions crescendo to a peak with the show’s grand finale, a stream of fireworks that is bright and steady like a geyser of light. This part of the show is triggered electronically; the long chain of fuses is rigged to go off at the flip of a switch. When it does, a palpable chill of excitement runs through the crowd. The entire park lights up.

After it’s over, the crowd cheers.

"The best yet," David Werts raves. "That’s what America is all about."

Across the water, Amanda Burns isn’t done yet.

"After all the fireworks," she says, "we’ve gotta clean the crap up."

Each plastic tube is filled with a shell and gunpowder and is connected by fuses with other tubes. The tubes are hand-lit during the fireworks display.