Fireworks setup painstaking job

MOSES LAKE — Alex Allsbrook pointed out the irony as he was helping set up the July 4 Freedom Festival fireworks display.

“It (setup) is about an eight-hour day for a show that lasts about 30 minutes,” he said. But it’s a pretty spectacular 30 minutes.

Setup takes all day because it’s an intricate operation – not to mention crews are handling explosive shells.

The Freedom Festival display was one of the few community fireworks shows in Eastern Washington in 2020. Most fell victim to restrictions on gatherings imposed to combat the COVID-19 outbreak.

Heather Gobet, owner of Western Display Fireworks, said her company usually puts on about 200 fireworks shows each July 4. For 2020 they presented 34. “I commend them (Freedom Festival organizers) for getting creative and going forward with the show,” Gobet said.

The Freedom Festival show was designed by Western Display. “We go look at each one of the individual sites, talk to the customers,” Gobet said. Western Display employees take care of the design, order the shells, work with festival organizers to get the necessary permits.

It’s a long process. Orders for fireworks must be placed more than a year in advance, Gobet said.

“The entire show is all pre-loaded, and it’s all electronically fired,” Gobet said. The individual shells are packed in boxes, in sequence, for shipping.

Once the boxes and equipment got to Moses Lake, emptying them and getting everything in its proper place was the job of the Allbrook family. The Allbrooks also were in charge of firing the shells.

Scott Allsbrook is the pyrotechnician, and his sons Alex and Andrew, daughter-in-law Lisa and friend Jacob Johnson were helping unpack the shells and load the tubes. “We’re a family affair,” Scott Allsbrook said.

“I’ve been doing this for 28 years,” he said.

Fireworks shells come in different sizes, depending on the effect desired, and for the Freedom Festival display the shells ranged from three to six inches in diameter. Each shell is numbered according to its place in the display, and the Allsbrook family laid them out in sequence. The 20 minutes of Freedom Festival fireworks required about 300 shells.

Each one is removed from the cardboard box – the Allsbrooks always flip the boxes over and open them from the bottom, so the shells can be unpacked in the sequence in which they were packed. They are loaded into a set of plastic tubes, what Gobet called a “pallet of mortars.”

The tubes are lengths of extra-sturdy plastic pipe, and are set in a wood framework, attached to a pallet. A wire is attached to each shell, and each wire is attached to a set of relay switches.

The switches are in turn attached to a master board. That’s activated by a key, which is nowhere near the master board until showtime, Scott Allsbrook said.

It takes the tubes about 15 minutes to cool down once the show is over, Gobert said. Any shells that didn’t fire are discharged with a highway flare.

The entire setup must be broken down right after it’s had a chance to cool off, Scott Allsbrook said.

It does make for a long day, but it has its rewards. “When you get to flip that switch it makes it all worth it,” Andrew Allsbrook said.

This year was different, Scott Allsbrook said, because people weren’t allowed to gather in McCosh Park. But in a normal year the pyrotechnicians can hear the crowd cheering as the grand finale is launched. Hearing the crowd reaction makes the all the work worthwhile, he said.

Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at [email protected].