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Dec 10, 2023

Fireworks crew has oohs, aahs down to a science

By Mike Cherney The Virginian-Pilot VIRGINIA BEACH Behind every fireworks display, there are people like Jay Laderer and his crew. In his 30 years in the industry, Laderer has seen safety standards

By Mike Cherney

The Virginian-Pilot

VIRGINIA BEACH

Behind every fireworks display, there are people like Jay Laderer and his crew.

In his 30 years in the industry, Laderer has seen safety standards get better, colors get brighter and a shift from manual to electronic firing. But the 57-year-old from Meadville, Pa., said what keeps him on the job is the fun.

“This is something we just love to do,” said Laderer, beer in hand as he relaxed at a Virginia Beach beach house that he rents every year for the week of the Fourth of July.

In industry parlance, Laderer is called a shooter. He works for Pyrotecnico, a New Castle, Pa.-based company that has been putting on shows in Hampton Roads for 15 years and will be conducting Virginia Beach’s show at Mount Trashmore this year.

When the big fireworks companies get a contract, Laderer said, they contact shooters who organize a crew to set up and put on the show. Laderer’s entourage this year consists of his two daughters, the finance of one of them, neighbors and friends.

“You trust your life with these people,” he said. “If you screw up, you or someone around you dies.”

Injuries, though, are few. Laderer said he’s put up about half a million firework shells in his life and has only had one crew member sustain injuries, and those were minor.

Better materials developed over the decades have led to improved safety, he said. Today, a 6-inch shell with a smaller explosion can yield as spectacular of a display as a 12-inch shell did decades ago.

In addition, audiences are required to be f arther away from the launching sites than they were in the past.

Laderer said he can set up a standard fireworks display, which usually costs around $25,000, in an area the size of a large backyard. His crew spends a couple of days wiring fireworks so they launch at the push of a button. Electronic firing also decreases the chance for injuries, Laderer said, although about 20 percent of a show is still hand-fired – just for fun.

And while fireworks have gotten safer, the colors have gotten brighter.

“It’s all chemistry,” said John Conkling, an adjunct professor of chemistry at Washington College in Maryland and the former technical director for the American Pyrotechnics Association.

Fireworks manufacturers use aluminum powder as the main burning agent in the shells. In recent years, however, Chinese manufacturers – the source of cheap fireworks for many American companies – have pioneered adding magnesium to the aluminum to create an alloy called magnalium.

Magnesium burns brighter than aluminum, creating more vibrant colors, Conkling said.

In addition, chemists have been able to improve the copper compounds that create violet and blue fireworks.

Certain elements yield different colors, Conkling said. Red is produced by strontium, green by barium and yellow-orange by sodium. White requires only magnalium.

Audiences can usually look forward to a few new shapes and techniques every year, said Julie L. Heckman, the executive director of the American Pyrotechnics Association.

She said that in addition to the standard favorites – chrysanthemums, palms, willows and peonies – Saturn rings have become popular.

Some companies have also developed fireworks that can change colors four or five times, but Heckman said that heavy competition means that manufacturers are tight-lipped about new fireworks until after the Fourth of July.

“I think every year people go away from the show and say, ‘Oh, that was the best show I’ve ever seen,’ ” she said. “There’s always something different from the year before.”

Back at the beach house in Virginia Beach, Laderer and his crew were preparing Monday evening by eating a home-cooked meal of crab legs and hamburgers. Tuesday and today, though, would be all work – and crew members said they wouldn’t miss it for anything.

Shawn Ashbaugh, 40, also from Meadville, said that he and his daughter have had to miss his wife’s birthday to be part of the fireworks display the past few years.

“The first year she was like, ‘Well…’ ” said Ashbaugh, who works in a plant that produces hubs and spindles for automobiles. “And after that, there hasn’t even been any discussion. But we do call and say, ‘Happy Birthday.’ “

Mike Cherney, (757) 446-2363, [email protected]

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