Well with this past week being Fourth of July, and being a Certified Pyrotechnician Operator, I had a busy week. Because of this, my running suffered a little. So I am going to review all the fireworks shows we did.
The shows started on Tuesday (July 2nd) with the Charleston Riverdogs. This was a different show from the ones we have done in the past, because Alex Rodriguez was in town for a rehab start. For those that live under a sports rock, he is the third baseman for the New York Yankees.
On this night, and most of the week, we had to battle mother nature and the rain! However, this show went really well for us. Here are a few images from this game’s shoot.
On Wednesday, July 3rd we had our fireworks show for our church, Northwood Baptist scheduled. We have been doing a show for about 6 years now. This was the entire purpose for doing all this training and getting my certification as a pyrotechnician operator. The evening started great, I met with the shooter and my friend Chris Donnally at his house to load 130 cakes on our trucks and transport them to the church. This all went off without a hitch. We got them to the church, and set everything up and just waited for it to turn dark. Before it turned dark, I had a surprise visitor. The Deputy State Fire Marshall for South Carolina. I am glad I had everything in place and was doing everything properly. He and I talked for a couple of hours, and we got to know each other very well. So it finally turned dark, and with the darkness came the monsoon! The bottom fell and washed out our show, which was sad because we had put in so much work, and we don’t know how much product we have lost as of now. Oh well there will be more in the future.
So the third fireworks show, on Thursday, July 4th was on Folly Beach. This was a huge shoot for me as I was the operator for the show, and this is a big one for Southeastern Pyrotechnics Inc. We spent most of the day on Folly Beach setting up the show. The support staff on Folly Beach were awesome. We had to work around the tides, and had to wait until about 8:30PM before we could move everything onto the beach. We then had to continue to wait while the tides went further down, so we could have our distances needed. The show began about 10 PM. We shot for about 10 minutes, and the winds were getting really bad, so we had to stop, which was unfortunate, but always safety first.
Here is a website from an unknown person, who had some great shots from Folly Beach of the show.
On Friday night, July 5th, we did the fireworks show for the Charleston Battery Soccer Game. I have done a Battery game before, so this one wasn’t near as complex as the prior ones of the week. It was me and 3 other guys doing the show. This was probably the most successful show of the week. We were able to complete the show without any issues or weather abnormalities! A great show to finish off the week!
I’m glad you had some successful shows, despite the one at your church being a wash out. That’s really sad, because I don’t think North Charleston area has as many fireworks displays to begin with, so hopefully everyone who wanted to see the fireworks had the chance to see them somewhere else at a game or another display. That’s pretty cool that you got to do the shoot at the game with ARod too!
Yep it was a busy week… Hopefully I can rest and get back to my running schedule this week!
Sorry I didn’t make it out to the Battery game. I had planned on it – even had my tickets. I am so tired of rain.
Love all the explosives. Sounds like you have a good second (third? fourth?) career ahead of you. Now you just need to do the fireworks for a run at Disney to combine all your passions!
Yep I got to see what Disney Pyrotechnics job requirements are! LoL!
And an appropriate video. Boom Boom Pow!