Thursday, July 3, 2008

Behind the scenes of Fair Park Fourth’s fireworks display

Or, "Mommy, where do fireworks come from?"

By Erin Rice

If the thought of flaming strontium, magnesium, copper, barium, and sodium, projected hundreds of feet in the air, gets your blood pumping this time of year, then you have a number of options for patriotic revelry. One of DFW's biggest fireworks shows will take place at Fair Park on Friday night, with a day full of activities preceding it. We got a chance to scope out the Fair Park Fourth firing site to learn more about what attendees will see and hear.

The Friends of Fair Park didn't exactly hire just-some-company for its Independence Day event, opting instead for the first family of fireworks. The official pyrotechnics producer for U.S. presidential inaugurations since Ronald Reagan’s in 1981, the Grucci family started its fireworks business back in 1850 with Angelo Grucci. Born in Italy, he moved to Long Island in 1870. The family business has been passed down several generations since to the current company heads, Donna and Felix Grucci, Jr.

This year’s Fair Park Fourth will be the event’s biggest display to date. According to Chief Pyrotechnician Tom Brown, Friday night’s program takes four days to set up once the truck hits the location, with 160 man-hours spread among a team of six pyrotechnicians (meaning you better damn well clap after your 18 minutes of dazzle).

Fireworks presentations of this magnitude are not simply pre-produced and shipped out to the more than 50 July 4th programs the Gruccis are organizing across the nation. Friday’s show is tailor made using a song list submitted by the Friends of Fair Park, which will include clips from such patriotic gems as Birthday by The Beatles, Beautiful Day by U2, and Yankee Doodle & Grand Old Flag by John Philip Sousa. Sousa. I believe he won American Idol a couple years ago.

After 26 hours are spent choreographing the program to pop and sparkle at all the right high notes, everything is boiled down to a well-timed script du jour. This year’s show boasts 444 firing cues, each of which could contain any number of shells hitting the sky. The largest shell is eight inches in diameter, which works out to roughly an 800-foot blast once airborne.

The program's producer, Doug Zastrow (who considers himself a “P.T. Barnum” as far as showmanship is concerned), is the type whose eyes light up a bit when asked about fireworks. Among the number of shell types expected in Friday’s program – Chrysanthemum, Peony, Saturn, Weeping Willow, etc. – one of the newest is the Kamaru, which Zastrow pointed out is Japanese for “boy’s head of hair.” “The Kamaru breaks in the sky and comes down in a cascade of very fine gold sparks,” he continued, which will come out towards the end of the program contributing to the “trademark Grucci finale of noise and gold.”

While tomorrow’s program is being touted as the biggest in North Texas (unless you ask these guys) it’s not the biggest that Zastrow and Brown have worked on. That title belongs to the fireworks showcase set up for 2001’s APEC meeting in Shanghai, China, which fire from ten floating barges, each containing eight times the number of shells that will be fired off in Fair Park.

So how much does a show like this cost to put together? Well neither the Grucci employees nor Ann Pomykal from Friends of Fair Park seemed to have that figure, but Brown did note that the 2nd Clinton inauguration, with ten firing sites and 60 technicians, ran about $1.2 million. Ok, Fair Park has one firing site and 6 technicians, so moving the decimal point over a spot gives us $12 million! Wait, something like $120,000 worth of flaming, bursting projectiles to feast your eyes on! God bless America.

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• Holidays > Fourth of July

Comments

Mike Orren Staff

So I've been told before that there's a glass shop (or was it a stone shop) around I-30 and Dolphin that is a perfect viewing spot for the fireworks. Zat so? Anyone know how to get there? I also seem to remember that it had no frontage road entrance.

1 month, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )

Scott Miller Verified

Never heard that. Dolphin seems kinda far from the action. There will be cars parked all along the shoulder of I-30 if it's anything like previous 4ths of July.

I like to come in the back way down MLK to Fitzhugh or Haskell and find a spot to park. Every available parking lot is a picnic ground. You can usually get a better view there than you can inside the grounds of Fair Park.

So good, in fact, that one year I got a hot ember right in the eye. Hurt like hell for a week.

1 month, 2 weeks ago ( Link to this comment | Suggest removal )