Fireworks for 4th Fest arrive

By Mike Joseph

UNIVERSITY PARK — About 10,500 fireworks shells from China arrived by tractor-trailer Friday night and will be the objects of intense work for 100 or so volunteers this weekend to prepare for 4th Fest on Friday.

“We’ll be handling each one of those shells at least twice,” Gary Mayhew, 4th Fest pyrotechnics chairman, said Friday. “We’ll be putting a fuse on each and every one of them and putting them in a tube.”

Mayhew said the volunteers will include experienced and novice hands, and the big weekend job will likely start this morning with a safety lecture.

“Look, guys,” he said, previewing such a lecture, “you are handling explosives. They’re no different than handling a stick of dynamite or anything else. Around here, safety is our No. 1 concern.”

The staging area for the fireworks behind Medlar Field was cordoned off Friday and posted with off-limit signs warning about explosives. A 24-hour security detail has been established. Mayhew said a test-shoot for the fireworks shells will probably take place Sunday or Monday after dark.

The 4th Fest fireworks show Friday will benefit from a new motorized mechanism to help display set pieces that depend on tower structures rising from the ground. Mayhew said some of the work ahead of the arrival of shells Friday was to make sure the new motors are strong enough to move the frames holding the shells.

The shells were shipped late this year because a Feb. 14 explosion in a Chinese port city destroyed 20 fireworks warehouses. The fusing process scheduled to start today would normally have begun at least four days earlier.

Mike Joseph can be reached at 235-3910.