Yearly accomplishment requires planning, good weather

I have just come back from my annual Fourth of July sojourn up north, where I get to ride on my husband’s coattails while he takes charge of a fireworks show for Veronen’s Resort located on Bad Medicine Lake about half an hour from Park Rapids. When guests there learn I am part of the fireworks crew, they thank me profusely for the exciting–and safe–presentations John has put on there for 17 years in a row.

 

I express my gratitude and answer the often repeated question: Yes, this show will have the fireballs everyone loves. But this is one setting where I am only a helper. In fact, I’ve taken to calling myself “clerical” because of the time I spend helping prepare for the show. My most important skills are being able to type smoothly and quickly and to create a computer spreadsheet that helps keep track of what features we have for the show and the order they will be used in.

 

I help with some of the wiring and other tasks, too, but others are much faster and more flexible than I am, so I tend to be left with some of the putzy jobs.

 

Because the location where the fireworks are fired from is not far enough away from where the land-based audience sits, this show cannot include the powerful “shells” that are four or more inches in diameter and fly hundreds of feet in the sky. Instead it uses “cakes” and other smaller items, many of which are sold to regular folks at fireworks stores in other states.

 

The cakes are not legal in Minnesota unless they are part of an authorized display, and to be authorized the show must have at least one licensed pyrotechnician on staff. They also cost much less apiece than the shells do, so what our show lacks in size, it makes up for in quantity, lasting 45 minutes or so and firing numerous products in a timed sequence that choreographs with an energetic music sound track.

 

It requires planning, preparation, and hours and hours and hours of work. It’s also heavily reliant on the weather. Fireworks are unlikely to work properly once they’ve gotten wet, but they’re still a huge explosion risk, becoming a giant, messy liability. The “solution” is not to get them wet, which creates tremendous caution and attentiveness to what the weather will be doing in the hours leading up to shoot time.

 

Preliminary forecasts around Wednesday had everyone questioning whether a display on Saturday would work out, since rain was supposed to be moving through sporadically all day.

 

Fortunately, the weather changed its mind and everything “went off” on schedule. Then, around midnight when everyone else was packing up their chairs and drinks and heading back to their campsite, the pyrotechnician crew had more than an hour’s work to do pulling all the equipment back together, piling up the trash, and clearing the area. Like I said–hours and hours and hours of work.

 

If you would like to see a sample of the high-energy show, Deanna Sinclair, a camper at Veronen’s Resort, kindly shared a video she made of the last 90 or so seconds of the show. She gave permission for us to post it on the Facebook pages for the Waseca County Pioneer and the NRHEG Star Eagle. Pop on over and have a look!