Barrage of work behind Asheville's fiery 4th

Hayley Benton | The Citizen-Times

Show Caption Hide Caption Top 5 things to do this week & other events, June 30-July 7 A list of the top things to do around Asheville this week, June 30-July 7, plus details on events that didn't quite make our weekly list.

Just after dark on July 4, thousands of faces will turn toward the sky, illuminated by bright flashes of light — the Pop! Bang! Fizzle! of fireworks echoing through downtown Asheville's streets.

As fun as it might be to imagine the display as an extravagant amateur production — our elected officials lounging atop the parking deck in folding chairs, lighting fuses and running for cover — this elaborate show of pyrotechnics requires more planning than the average backyard barbecue-and-sparklers show.

Put on by the Asheville Downtown Association in partnership with the city, the Ingles Independence Day Celebration — the official name of downtown's big Fourth of July event — draws as many as 15,000 people to the Pack Square Park area each year, with a matching $15,000 price tag for fireworks alone.

And that's actually "a pretty good price for Fourth of July fireworks," explained Meghan Rogers, executive director of the ADA. But rather than going out to a roadside stand and shopping for explosives on their own, most municipalities work with licensed professionals to put on the July 4th shows.

In the city of Asheville's case, that company is Pyrotecnico, a 128-year-old business that puts on firework shows all over the country — whether it's for the Fourth of July or for a concert, sporting event, festival or private party.

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Six days before the Fourth of July, Pyrotecnico show producer Justin Pruett was hard at work gearing up for the holiday.

"Unfortunately, I don't have time to go into a whole lot of detail," he said. "This is our busiest time of the year, and I'm going to be answering calls all day."

Shows on the Fourth of July are different and more complex than fireworks shows at other times during the year, he explained. For Independence Day, fireworks are the show — rather than a side attraction to another event.

"One of the biggest factors for July Fourth is that clients want a show that's longer than a show you might see any other time of the year," Pruett said. "Most July Fourth shows tend to be in the 20-30 minute range," whereas shows for baseball games or other events tend to last only a few minutes.

After discussing the client's expectations, Pyrotecnico gets to work assessing the proposed launch site, which, in Asheville, is from atop of the Buncombe County Parking Garage on College Street, directly across from the Buncombe County Courthouse and Asheville City Hall.

So what does the setup look like from on top of the garage?

Even the locals who plan the event aren't quite sure.

"I’m not even allowed up there," Rogers said. "So I actually don't know. The area is for fire officials and fireworks officials only."

Luckily, Pruett is one such official and has the answer to that question: Pyrotecnics places the fireworks across multiple pallets, called cakes, along the roof of the deck, arranging the cakes into two mirror-image displays on either side of the garage.

Rather than running from cake to cake with a box of matches, these large displays are all electronically fired from two separate control panels, Pruett said. At the time of the show, there are three to four fireworks personnel controlling the launch from the roof.

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"From about noon until 8 or 9 o' clock, the operators and assistants will work to get everything wired up and run everything back to the control panels," he explained. When it's time to start the show, "the operator lights the cakes through electronic matches, (which) is similar to a wooden match, but it receives an electrical current that pops the match head and stays on fire long enough to light whatever it's connected to."

For Asheville's show, the key is to go wide rather than tall — hence the two mirrored setups on the roof.

"The positions will fire simultaneously," Pruett explained. "It makes the show look wider, and won't make it look any taller."

In pyrotechnics-speak, Asheville's show is a low-level barrage-style display, mostly due to the site from which the fireworks are launched.

When launching from ground-level, in a traditional aerial display, "you may have five, six, 700 shots spread out over the show," Pruett said. But when launching them from above the crowd, "the fireworks themselves are typically smaller, and you make up for it in size with sheer volume. In a show like this, you have 10,000 shots in one show. It's a lot more content in a fast past."

But why the Buncombe County garage?

"It’s pretty much the only site in a crowded downtown area that is feasible for launching fireworks," Rogers said. "A couple of years ago, we investigated and went to a couple different sites to see if they’d be feasible for the fireworks show — at Planning and Development on Charlotte Street, Martin Luther King Park."

4th of July Fireworks in downtown Asheville. Fourth of July Fireworks in downtown Asheville in 2015.

But, she said, there were concerns about safety at the former, and, of course, at the latter, concerns for residents of the neighborhood surrounding the park.

When asked for July Fourth horror stories — on all the things that could go wrong, Pruett said he didn't have any tales to tell.

Luckily for Asheville, its residents and the professionals at Pyrotecnics, the company "has one of the best safety records in the industry," he explained. "Ultimately, fireworks, when done improperly, can be extremely dangerous — and that's why we leave it to the trained professionals."

Performing around 3,000 shows per year, with "a good chunk coming during the July 4 season," Pruett said it was near impossible for him to pick a favorite display.

"With that volume of shows, it's hard to put a finger on a specific presentation," he said. "But, for me, personally, I tend to like shows that are on the water — on a pier or a barge, where you can see the fireworks reflected in the water."

The Pyrotecnics crew aren't the only ones hard at work on the Fourth of July, and the holiday is notoriously one of the fire department's busiest days of the year.

All of the fireworks "are inspected prior to the show by the Buncombe County Fire Marshal," Rogers said. "And we utilize the fire department at the APD as well for other safety precautions — making sure that any debris that falls to the ground is extinguished and securing the fallout zone."

In addition to police and firefighters, the ADA and its team of volunteers work tirelessly at the event as well.

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"Fortunately, we have a lot of experience with big events," Rogers explained. "With Downtown After 5 and the Asheville Holiday Parade, we know a thing or two about producing big events.

"The biggest thing we rely on, though, is volunteers," she continued. "We rely on hundreds of volunteers to put on our events, and this proves each year to be the most difficult, because it's a holiday. We find it really difficult to fill all the slots."

ADA event manager Kat McReynolds added that the July Fourth holiday brings with it about 140 volunteer shifts that need filling each year.

"Most shifts have been covered by the volunteer group we've cultivated over decades of putting on other events," McReynolds explained. "But, because the Ingles Independence Day Celebration is so big ... we do lots of extra recruiting. ... This event is truly an all-hands-on-deck situation."

In three- to four-hour shifts, volunteers cover everything from setting up and breaking down event equipment to beer-wristband sales to monitoring the kids' bounce houses.

"It’s a long day for us," Rogers said, already deep into Independence Day planning. "We work about 20 hours that day, from start to finish. ... But it's just part of the job. It's just what we do.

"You know, last year, I was standing in the middle of the field with the sound guy, and, honestly, at first, I was so glad that it was almost over," she explained. "But I looked around and people were screaming and clapping and they were so happy. I thought, This is what it's all about. It made that 20-hour day feel not so bad."