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Originally Posted by grantp
Some of the local firework displays last night looked like they too had the potential to result in unplanned incendiary activity. Hopefully they were all incident free.
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The Beeb is reporting that a public display in Australia had an malfunction last night, and the lot went up at once.
Brings back memories of the 70s and 80s. A friend and I went through training to put on public displays which we held on Fireworks Night to raise money for charity. The training was given by the Kimbolton School Chaplain, the Rev Ron Lancaster, a pyrotechnical wizard who used to actually make and supply fireworks from bunkers in the school grounds. His enterprise used to supply many of the public displays such as the ones held on NYE on the Thames in London and for the Royal celebrations.
Most big displays are fired electronically, and are set up hours in advance often on scaffolding erected for the purpose. Those like Ron are so enthralled by fireworks that they hold competitions amongst themselves to produce the best displays. On one occasion, one competitor used an outside contractor to set up the display on the scaffolding as they were unable to be there in person. The problem was that the contractor used nails that were too long for the wood backing that was then attached to the scaffolding.
I'm sure that the reader is already knows what happened. Suffice to say that a 15 minute display went up in about 10 seconds when the first firework was fired.