We bought wholesale by the case this year, shopping the “Early Bird” special in April, but we did not stop there. Every time I thought, “OK, we have enough fireworks now,” the universe answered: “More.”
So we kept buying and buying. As late as Friday, July 3, I added a dozen more big booms for the Grand Finale, because that’s what matters most — end big, so that the audience is left in a condition of astonishment.
Last night we finished fusing up the last mortar racks. If you look at the photo closely, see on the right side those four black boxed with silver swords? Those are Excaliber canister shells (“Excals”) and we’ve got 96 of them in the show, along with 96 Neon Skies canister shells (in the cardboard case next to the Excals) as well as 66 Whistling Blasters, 12 King Arthur canister shells, 42 Nishiki Blast canister shells (willow effect) and six other canister shells — 318 total. That’s in addition to the dozens of cakes (repeaters) that will be fused together on barrage boards.
As I’ve explained before, the reason that consumer fireworks (1.4G) are so much fun is that you don’t need safety “setbacks” as long as those required for professional (1.3G) shows. Instead of seeing the shells break way off in the distance, the greater proximity of consumer fireworks makes it feel like the breaks are “in your face” — as if you are inside the barrage, an almost hallucinogenic feeling. Just to give you a small understanding of what we have planned, we have three boards in the finale composed entirely of smaller 200-gram cakes, which will break lower than the artillery shells. Those three boards comprise a total of 540 shots that will be fired in about 20 seconds (i.e., 27 shots per second), and that’s just one element of the grand finale. Intensity.
Beyond the intensity fact, the other thing is to “fill the sky” — from top to bottom and side to side. We’ll use many angled effects, and there will be color comets and mine effects shooting up from the ground, so that the barrage is panoscopic. I’d like to continue this pyrotechnic lecture, but now I’ve got to go supervise the show-day preparations, and there’s no more time. Sunset is at 8:42 and showtime is an hour after that. We must go do our patriotic duty on this, our nation’s 250th birthday.
We are now less than three months away from the 250th anniversary of American independence, which means that the “Early Bird Special” at my favorite fireworks wholesaler will soon be ending. That’s the shortest explanation for why I’ve once again super-sized the PayPal “donate” button for the benefit of near-sighted readers who otherwise may have overlooked the PayPal button. The first time I did this, seven years ago, the financial situation was so dire that I posted a picture of Mrs. Other McCain in a bikini. Fortunately, the household budget has improved since then, so I’m not fretting over the electric bill now. However my favorite wholesale fireworks outlet has a $750 minimum purchase to qualify for their 25% Early Bird discount, and so why not the bikini?
Nineteen ninety was a very good year, my friends. Perhaps you can see why keeping my wife happy is Job Number One, and despite the improvement in our household finances, we’re not so affluent that taking out $750 for a wholesale fireworks purchase would make my wife happy. She tolerates my annual pyrotechnical extravaganzas, which is not to say she approves of the expense. From her point of view, it’s terribly wasteful, whereas from my point of view, it’s therapeutic. Maintaining sanity in this crazy world is difficult, especially when your day job requires you to pay attention to politics. The business of assembling a fireworks show — timing all those fuses in search of the perfect finale, etc. — gives me a distraction from the howling madness, and a constructive outlet for my mental and emotional energies.
That’s the finale of our 2020 show, and we hope to make it extra special for this year’s 250th celebration of July 4th. So whatever you could contribute — $5, $10, $25 — would be greatly appreciated because the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are still:
Thinking back on the history of our family’s pyrotechnical celebrations of American independence, the 2020 show was probably the apogee, the zenith, the ne plus ultra. We had 35 cases worth of fireworks that year, and the grand finale was nearly a minute of extreme intensity.
That was the conclusion of an 11-minute show and, really, you shouldn’t go longer than that. I’ve watched a lot of videos of backyard shows, including some d0ne with electrical firing systems that make possible a greater precision of effects. But no matter how excellent your planning and execution may be, if your show is much longer than 10 minutes, the audience will get bored. There are only so many different effects available, and after a few minutes of boom-boom-boom, it becomes repetitive. What we do — how I learned it, back 20 years ago when I was haunting the online message boards of fireworks enthusiasts — to help avoid this problem is what is called the “roller coaster” approach. You build up to a peak, then go back down, then peak again, and back down until at the end, you blow their minds with a massive finale barrage.
What really counts in a finale is intensity, which can be expressed mathematically as “breaks per second” (BPS). The bursting of a fireworks shell is called the “break,” which is not always synonymous with the number of shots being fired, because not every shot has a break. Some shots are comets or mines that don’t produce an exploding break. In our shows, we usually include what are called Color Pearl cakes (48 or 96 shots) that are just small red and green comets, in order to Create a multilevel effect — the little comets going up from the bottom, with the big shells breaking up top. You can also do this using roman candles.
Roman candle racks from our 2020 show
We’ll be shooting a dozen 48-shot Color Pearl cakes in one of our finales this year, which means 576 little red and green comets flying into the air in the span of about 20 seconds. You’ll notice I said “one of our finales,” because part of the “roller coaster” method of doing a fireworks show is building up to at least one fake finale before you do the massive barrage of the Grand Finale. If you execute this properly, with the fake finale intense enough to make people think this is the end, then give about a 10-second delay (“pause for applause,” as we say), it’s a pretty shocking thing for the audience when you hit the fuse for the real finale.
Thanks to generous donations from the tip-jar hitters, I’m now looking at an inventory list that tells me we’ve got 374 shots in the 30-second real finale — an intensity of 12 shots per second. Is that enough?
Well, there’s no such thing as “enough,” probably, but I’ve sent thank-you notes to several of y’all who chipped in to help me acquire this year’s fireworks stash. That includes Bernard in Wisconsin, Stephen in Arkansas, a certain resident of Connecticut, and a young Virginia fellow who says he might be able to make it up to see our show when we shoot next Saturday, July 12, in West Virginia. The reason for that delay is that one of my grandsons is at camp this week, so in order for him to be able to see the show, we had to postpone it by eight days. Which means . . .
Maybe I could hit the fireworks stores again this coming week and take advantage of their deep post-4th of July discounts to add even more boom-boom to that finale! It’s certainly not too late to remind you that the Five Most Important Words in the English Language are:
It was John Adams who, in a 1776 letter to his wife Abigail, declared that the occasion of our independence should “be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival” including “Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.” And by “Illuminations,” of course, he meant fireworks, which is why the Big Yellow Button has returned.
Although the PayPal donation button is permanently on the page, on special occasions I enlarge for the benefit of those readers who might be nearsighted and thus unable to see the button at its regular size. Click upon the Big Yellow Button and it will take you to PayPal where you can contribute $17.76 toward our family’s celebration of independence.
There is a “buy one get one free” (BOGO) coupon burning a hole in my pocket today. You see, as a frequent customer of the nearest major fireworks vendor, I’m on their text message list, and they send coupons to my phone. Today’s one-day special is BOGO on any item $50 or less, so if any readers were feeling particularly generous, $50 would be awesome, but any amount — $5 or $10 or $20 — would be most welcome.
Son Jim rigging our 2022 finale board.
WOW, it’s been three years since we did a show? The Biden years were tough, man, but now that America Is Great Again, it’s time to remind readers of the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
If he lives long enough to get out of prison when his sentence expires in 2055, Joseph Javonte Washington will be 60 years old. The taxpayers of Minnesota can do their own cost-benefit analysis in this matter, but a former police officer nearly saved them that cost — and got fired for it.
I’ve watched enough YouTube videos of officer-involved shootings in the past few years that I could probably qualify as an expert witness on the subject by now. Many times, there’s not much to learn from such videos — like, what part of “drop the knife” do I have to explain? At least 90% of the time a suspect gets shot by a cop, there’s no doubt that the shooting was justified, and the deceased criminal is such a menace to society that nothing of value was lost in incident. However, the case of Joseph Javonte Washington is highly instructive in several ways, because (a) he’s a vile monster, but (b) was unarmed when the cop shot him, however (c) he survived the shooting and (d) the cop got fired before the completion of the investigation which (e) found the shooting was justified.
OK, maybe it’s a stretch to say that the investigation found the shooting of Washington was “justified,” but no charges were filed against the officer, and when you consider that this decision was made by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison — yeah, if he could have prosecuted the cop, he certainly would have done it. There are a lot of interesting factors involved in this case, including the fact that Joseph Javonte Washington was stark naked when he got shot, so I’m gonna break it down pretty thoroughly — right after this brief word from our sponsor . . .
Say hello to the Big Yellow Button. Every once in a while, as a service to those readers who might be suffering visual impairment, I super-size the PayPal button, just in case you didn’t notice it before. Also, I rattle the tip jar like this when I find myself in need of some extra cash, which hasn’t been very often lately, as the day job’s been pretty good to me. However, with Fourth of July just a few weeks away, and my fireworks addiction being a monkey on my back, I’m kind of in a bind. Must I approach my dear wife and ask, “Honey, the fireworks store has a buy-one-get-one-free special for Memorial Day weekend, do you mind if I blow a couple hundred dollars?” Because we just got back from our trip to Michigan and Wisconsin for our kids’ graduations, and that wasn’t exactly cheap.
Anyway, to rescue me from that dilemma, readers are invited to chip in whatever they can — just $5 or $10 would help — and thanks in advance. Meanwhile, back to this police shooting in Minnesota . . .
St. Paul ‘community advocate’ Toshira Garraway
It was November 2020, barely six months after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis touched off nationwide riots, when Joseph Javonte Washington was shot by a cop in neighboring St. Paul:
“No justice no peace, prosecute the police,” and “no good cops in a racist system” were among the chants heard last Friday, Dec. 4 as over 100 people marched down University Avenue in St. Paul demanding former St. Paul cop Anthony Dean be criminally charged following his November 28 shooting of Joseph Javonte Washington.
Washington was naked and unarmed at the time of the shooting and appeared to be experiencing some kind of mental crisis. Dean was fired within days of the shooting by St. Paul Police Chief Todd Axtell.
On the same day, Ramsey County Attorney John Choi referred the case to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. . . . “This is not about what happened prior to the incident,” said Toshira Garraway in a speech to the crowd, referring to Washington’s assault on his girlfriend prior to his confrontation with the police. “Police should not add to our pain. They say they are fighting crime, but they are committing crimes.”
Fortunately, this inflammatory rhetoric didn’t incite any rioting because, even in a hotbed of liberalism like St. Paul, most people have enough common sense to consider that maybe it really was “about what happened prior to the incident,” as Ms. Garraway phrased it.
What happened was heinous enough that Washington won’t be getting out of prison for another 30 years, and even Keith Ellison couldn’t find a way to prosecute the cop who shot Washington.
The St. Paul officer who shot an unarmed man did so “to protect his fellow officers and himself” and because he had information that the suspect “claimed to have a gun and had used a knife earlier that evening in a violent assault and rape,” his attorney said Wednesday.
Tony Dean, who the police chief has terminated, was an award-winning officer who reached his dream of becoming a cop in his hometown.
Dean, who graduated in 2001 from St. Paul’s Central High School, was a U.S. Marine for eight years and Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office correctional officer before he was hired as a St. Paul officer in 2014. . . .
“Many attempts by law enforcement to de-escalate the situation using a variety of non-lethal methods were unsuccessful and the suspect did not cooperate,” Dean’s attorney, Robert Paule, said in a statement on Wednesday. . . .
Dean, who initially was a St. Paul patrol officer, was assigned to the gang unit since 2018. . . .
The Minnesota American Legion named Dean as officer of the year in 2016 and Axtell gave him the department’s life-saving award for working with other officers to save a woman who was trying to jump from a bridge in April.
Axtell honored Dean and the gang unit at the start of the year, writing in January that they “displayed diligence, teamwork, professionalism and exemplary investigative work over the past few years” in federal prosecutions against more than 50 people related to firearms crimes involving gang members.
“Officer Dean has led an exemplary career as a law enforcement officer, and has received recognition and accolades for his compassion, commitment to community, and his mentorship of youth in St. Paul,” said Paul Kuntz, St. Paul police union president, in a statement Wednesday.
What happened here? Wouldn’t you think that an officer like Tony Dean, who had been praised just a few months before by the chief, would have deserved the benefit of the doubt? But the political climate had been changed by the George Floyd riots, and the police chief . . . Well, I hesitate to criticize the chief too harshly, but when all the facts are considered, Officer Dean deserves an apology. Here I have to give a big tip of the hat to the Midwest Safety YouTube channel, which had to file an appeal with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA) in order to get access to all the records and video footage in this case.
You can and should watch that entire 20-minute video, because the crimes committed by Joseph Javonte Washington were heinous and, when you look at the situation in its totality — Washington was known to have wielded a knife, yelled to cops that he had a gun, etc. — it’s clear that Officer Dean made the best decision possible. Also, I would point out, Officer Dean didn’t do a “mag dump” on Washington. Once the suspect was down, Officer Dean stopped shooting, which is the only reason the suspect survived. By the way, this was the first time in Officer Dean’s entire career that he ever shot anyone, so it’s not as if he could fairly be accused of being trigger-happy. And wow, the details of Washington’s crimes — “what happened prior to the incident” — are horrific:
A judge handed down a nearly 35-year sentence Tuesday [May 13] to a man who sexually assaulted and kidnapped his girlfriend, after which he was shot by a St. Paul police officer during a manhunt.
Dakota County Judge Dannia Edwards said she agreed with the prosecution’s request for a long sentence because Joseph Javonte Washington livestreamed the sexual assault “for the world to see” and because he assaulted the woman in her Lakeville residence, a place where she should have been safe.
After Washington assaulted the woman in November 2020, he instructed her “to drive him at high speeds from Lakeville to St. Paul,” which she did due to “fear and self-preservation,” Assistant Dakota County Attorney Caitie Prokopowicz wrote in a memo to the court. . . .
(OK, I’m interrupting here to point out that it’s about 30 miles from Lakeville to St. Paul, which fact is relevant.)
Washington, now 35, ran and hid in a dumpster behind a funeral home in St. Paul’s North End.
He yelled from the dumpster that he had a gun. The officer who shot him reported that Washington wasn’t fully facing the officers when he jumped out and he couldn’t tell if he was armed, according to prosecutors.
Washington, who was naked, turned out to be unarmed. . . .
Washington punched the woman in the face, breaking her eye socket. He held a knife to her neck and forced her to perform a sex act on him, Prokopowicz said during the trial. The prosecution also said he caused the vehicle to crash as the woman drove him. . . .
Washington previously filed a federal lawsuit against the city of St. Paul and two officers over his shooting, and the lawsuit is ongoing. The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office reviewed the officer’s shooting and announced in 2021 he would not charge him.
Around 6:30 p.m. Saturday [Nov. 28, 2020], Washington’s ex-girlfriend came home to find him waiting inside her Lakeville apartment.
Washington stole her phone and punched her in the face, knocking her head into a TV stand as she fell on the ground.
For the next hour, Washington dragged her from room to room by the hair, sexually assaulting her while brandishing a knife from her kitchen, charges say. Throughout the assault, Washington used her cellphone to record and livestream videos on Facebook and Snapchat. . . .
(This detail is important: He used her phone to livestream the sexual assault on her Facebook and Snapchat accounts, meaning that all of her followers — friends and family — could see it.)
Eventually, Washington forced the victim into her car and told her to drive, without stopping, through red lights. The car crashed into the fence of a Minnoco service station on Maryland Avenue and Rice Street around 8 p.m., after Washington grabbed the steering wheel.
A naked Washington ran from the car. The victim flagged down a passing motorist for help. . . .
(And now, ladies and gentlemen, the kicker.)
His criminal record includes at least three previous felonies for burglary and illegal possession of a firearm as a minor.
How many “second chances” do criminals deserve? How many times must we read news stories about heinous crimes committed by lifelong habitual felons who probably should have still been behind bars? All things considered — especially with Washington forcing the woman at knifepoint to drive at speeds over 100 mph, running red lights — this could be considered attempted murder. Washington was a clear danger to the community, and yet just four days after the shooting, Chief Axtell announced Officer Dean’s firing at a press conference where the chief played a single 44-second clip of body cameras video:
A St. Paul officer who shot and wounded a Black man who emerged naked from a dumpster while being sought in connection with a sexual assault failed to measure up to department standards, the city’s police chief said.
Chief Todd Axtell said Tuesday at a news conference where he released police bodycam video of the confrontation that he’d taken “swift, decisive and serious action” against the officer, identified by state investigators as Officer Anthony Dean.
Axtell said state law precludes him from releasing details of the action. The Minneapolis Star Tribune and St. Paul Pioneer Press, citing law enforcement sources they did not identify, reported that the officer was fired following Saturday night’s shooting of Joseph Javonte Washington. “When I asked myself if the officer’s actions on Saturday night were reasonable and necessary,” Axtell said, “the only answer I could come up with is “No.”
Again, I urge you to watch the 20-minute video from Midwest Safety, which contextualizes the incident thoroughly, in a way that could not have been done after a mere four days. And I cannot emphasize enough that the state’s attorney general, a notorious liberal who served in the Obama administration and who is certainly not pro-police, declined to file charges against Officer Dean:
[T]he investigation by the Attorney General’s Office found that Dean had enough facts at the time to reasonably conclude Washington was capable of inflicting great bodily harm or death upon officers or others in the area, and that Dean took action to protect himself and others.
“Officer Dean stated that he could not see Washington’s hands while in the dumpster, which caused him concern given report of a knife and Washington’s assertion he had a gun,” according to the Attorney General’s report.
Dean declined to comment Saturday. But his attorney, Robert Paule, said Dean was “relieved that justice was served in this matter” and called Axtell’s decision to fire his client “a knee-jerk reaction designed to prevent protests in St. Paul rather than a logical, thoughtful decision.”
Leading up to the incident on Nov. 28, Washington’s ex-girlfriend told officers that he had sexually assaulted, kidnapped and held her at knife point before forcing her to drive from Lakeville to St. Paul and crash her car. She said that Washington was high on drugs.
Later that night, officers attempted to coax a naked Washington out of a dumpster he was hiding in behind a funeral home in the North End. Body camera footage shows him suddenly jumping out of the dumpster and rushing at the officers, getting within 3 feet of Sgt. Kathleen Brown, who was leading the negotiations with him. That’s when Dean, who was assigned to cover Brown, shot Washington.
Dean told investigators that Washington had displayed several characteristics that “reasonably implied his use of narcotics and unpredictability.” Those characteristics included being naked in 40-degree temperatures for more than an hour, breaking into a nearby home to steal orange juice, and not being affected by pepper balls that officers shot at the dumpster where he was hiding.
Washington yelled at officers that he had a gun with him in the dumpster, Dean told the Attorney General’s Office. . . .
Dean told investigators he couldn’t see Washington’s hands as he left the dumpster, so he couldn’t verify that he was unarmed. Though the officers gave Washington a clear path to flee, he chose instead to run directly at them — another highly unusual sign that pointed to his unpredictability and potential for violence, Dean said.
Investigators hired use-of-force expert Jeffrey Noble to review the evidence independently and determine whether Dean’s conduct met generally accepted police practices. Noble determined that Dean’s actions were “objectively reasonable and consistent with generally accepted police practices.”
“Based on these objective facts, the State could not disprove that it was reasonable to believe death or great bodily harm could occur without using deadly force,” the Attorney General’s memo concluded.
“Objectively reasonable” — and we don’t know what would have happened if Officer Dean hadn’t shot Washington. As it was, Officer Dean should have been given an award for his excellent marksmanship, considering that he fired four shots at a moving target, at night, scored two hits, and did not hit either the officers nearby or the police K-9 that was involved in trying to take down Washington.
It was August 2021 when AG Ellison announced there would be no charges against Officer Dean, and two months later, in October 2021, Chief Axtell announced that he would retire after 33 years on the force, effective June 2022. As previously stated, I don’t want to criticize Chief Axtell too harshly. As the St. Paul Pioneer Press noted, Axtell’s six-year term as police chief was a long series of crises, and the chief had to walk a tightrope, especially after the George Floyd riots. I think Officer Dean’s lawyer is correct in saying that he was fired in “a knee-jerk reaction designed to prevent protests,” but I would also say that Chief Axtell sincerely believed he was doing the right thing. And frankly, it seems to me that Chief Axtell was psychologically broken by his experiences.
Imagine what it’s like trying to be cop in the capital city of a liberal state like Minnesota. You’re out there putting your life at risk every day, getting paid less than a school teacher (and a lot less than a politician) and the whole time you have to worry you’ll get into some kind of “incident” like this, where the “community advocate” types like Toshira Garraway demand you get fired and prosecuted. Always, it’s problems with The Community™ that make a cop’s life miserable. He is supposed to “serve and protect” The Community™ and yet cannot avoid noticing that many members of The Community™ (including the Toshira Garraway types) hate his guts and would be happy to see him dead.
Chief Axtell did that job for more than 30 years, rising up through the ranks of the St. Paul PD, and somewhere along the way, alas, I think the Woke Mind Virus took hold. Just before his retirement, Chief Atxell gave a long interview to to the local CBS affiliate, and if you watch the whole thing, you’ll hear the chief start talking a lot of progressive jargon about “disparate impact,” which was the point when I stopped watching, because I can’t stand to see a man humiliate himself that way.
It’s a sad thing to see a veteran cop demoralized, and I suspect many police officers in St. Paul were angry at how swiftly Chief Axtell threw Tony Dean under the bus to appease The Community™.
Washington’s mother, Tonya Comer, said the officer could have killed her son when he shot him.
“My son was unarmed, he had no weapons and he suffers from a mental health condition,” Comer said Friday. “… I want that police officer charged. … My son is being dragged through the mud for something he didn’t even do.”
Ma’am, your son already had three felony convictions before that night, and he livestreamed the sexual torture of a woman using her own phone. Yet here you are trying to claim “he didn’t even do” it? Portraying him as some kind of victim, making excuses about his “mental health condition,” and demanding that the officer be charged, despite the clear results of the investigation that found the officer did nothing wrong? Why anyone would sign up to “protect and serve” such people is a mystery to me. Some people just don’t deserve good cops, and the entire Community™ in St. Paul, Minnesota, can go straight to hell, for all I care.
* * * * * *
Well, that’s more than 3,000 words, but I figured on a Memorial Day weekend, maybe you had time to read the whole story. Also, because Officer Tony Dean is a Marine Corps veteran, Memorial Day weekend is a good time for remembering that not all heroes wear capes. But I’m not a hero, just a guy who tells stories for a living, and I disclaim any motive other than the one Samuel Johnson bluntly described: “No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.” That Memorial Day weekend sale at the fireworks store is beckoning me, so once again I ask readers to recall the Five Most Important Words in the English Language:
That’s my son Jim, rigging the last fuse on our Fourth of July fireworks finale. We planned the show on very short notice — driving back from Georgia after attending my Aunt Pat’s memorial service Saturday — and were adding to the show as late as six o’clock Monday afternoon, when Jim sent me to Pyro Dudes to grab another 48 shells and 40 feet of extra fuse for the finale. Unlike previous years, when we bought cases of fireworks wholesale, this year’s supply was purchased retail, mostly from our friends at Pyro Dudes, who have excellent prices and discounts.
We have been doing this since the boys were little, and I regret that only Jim was able to be involved in this year’s show. Bob and his wife are in Alaska now, Jefferson is in a certain Midwestern state, where he will begin law school this fall, and Emerson is in Spain with his wife. Meanwhile, my wife and our youngest daughter Reagan are in Florida with our oldest daughter Kennedy, so that left just Jim and me to carry on the patriotic family tradition of shooting off beaucoup fireworks on the Fourth of July. My brother Kirby was there, and kicked in $50 to help fund the show. We had a couple of slight timing issues with the fuses, although this did not detract from the overall awesomeness of the display and, most importantly, everything detonated safely.
After nearly 20 years, we kind of take safety for granted, because the way we fuse things together, nobody is actually in vicinity of danger when the stuff goes off. We have occasionally had a shell blow up in the tube, and a couple of times we had cakes that tipped sideways, but nothing that would endanger spectators. Other people, however . . .
That video has gotten 37 million views on Twitter, and is a perfect example of how not to shoot fireworks safely. The first error is proximity. You don’t want your spectators to be sitting right next to where the fireworks are going off. Considering that aerial shells can travel 150 feet or more up in the air, what happens if one goes sideways? So, yes, a setback of at least 50 yards between fireworks and spectators is advised.
Their second error — and this is actually rather common, although not often so disastrous — is that they were shooting off fireworks within just a few yards of their stash. The result speaks for itself, in terms of why this is not advisable. One spark goes into your fireworks stash and BOOM!
Meanwhile, 911 dispatchers across America were plagued by “Karens”:
It’s become an annual ritual — every Fourth of July, patriotic Americans celebrate with fireworks, and the neighborhood Karen calls 911. This is generally the same person who votes for politicians who want to tax and regulate everything. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Karens were demanding vaccine mandates. No doubt their ancestors were grumbling about those hooligans that threw the tea in Boston Harbor.
Every year, the Fourth of July yields a certain number of tragic injuries caused by fireworks — or, to be more specific in most cases, injuries caused by idiots who disregard the warning labels on fireworks.
The most common serious injuries nowadays seem to be caused by idiots mishandling mortars. If you aren’t familiar with consumer fireworks, a very popular item is the reloadable 1.75-inch mortar, sometimes called “artillery shells,” or just “shells.” Typically, these come in a package of six, 12 or 24 shells, with one, two or four mortar tubes packed into each kit. You can also build racks of mortar tubes, enabling you to fuse together a barrage of shells without having to re-load, but your typical consumer just uses the tubes that come in the package.
A 24-shell consumer mortar kit with 4 tubes.A 15-shot mortar rack, fused and ready.
Over the years, my sons and I have fired many hundreds of these shells and never had a problem, because we use mortar racks that are connected by timed fuses to finale boards, so by the time the shells start firing, we’re safely back in the spectator area — no problem. The worst mishap we’ve had was what’s called a “flower pot,” where the shell explodes inside the tube; this usually happens because of a malfunction with the “lift” charge (which launches the shell out of the tube). The other thing that can cause a “flower pot” is when someone accidentally loads the shell upside down, with the lift charge firing upward.
Now, if you’re using mortar racks, the result of a “flower pot” can be very bad — it can blow your rack apart, so that the chained fuse is lighting off shells in tubes scattered all over the ground, with stuff firing sideways and causing havoc. We build our racks pretty solid, however, so that the one time we had a “flower pot,” it blew out the mortar tube but didn’t break the whole rack, thank God. On the other hand, imagine what happens if you’re single-firing mortar shells out of the tubes that come with the kit and get a “flower pot.” It can be catastrophic.
“Light fuse and get away” — this warning appears on the labels of all consumer fireworks, and it’s there for a good reason. When you’re dealing with explosive items, proximity matters, but some people don’t take that label warning seriously enough. For example:
A 13-year-old boy was seriously injured by a firework that struck his face on Long Island late Sunday night, police said.
The victim was with a group of teens who were setting off fireworks outside of a Deer Park home at about 10:50 p.m. when a mortar exploded in his face, according to police.
The boy, who was not identified, was taken to Stony Brook University Hospital with serious injuries.
Investigators are trying to determine how the teens obtained the fireworks.
A man suffered a severe traumatic face injury in Waukegan while lighting off fireworks on Saturday night.
The man, who is in his 20s, was shooting off fireworks around 10 p.m. at a home on North County Street. He was hit in the face with a mortar-type firework, the fire department said.
He was first taken to Vista East Medical Center and then flown by helicopter to Lutheran General Hospital.
A man has died in a tragic firework accident after a mortar shell exploded inside of a firework tube, sending shrapnel into the man’s body and killing him on-site.
The incident occurred at approximately 12:20 a.m. on Sunday, July 4, in Salamonie Township — about 95 miles northeast of Indianapolis — in Huntington County, Indiana. First responders were called to the scene where a man was injured while setting off fireworks, according to a statement from the Huntington County Coroner’s Office.
When authorities arrived, they say they found the victim, 41-year-old Steven E. Sims of Hartford City, Indiana, with critical injuries to his abdomen.
The Huntington County Coroner said lifesaving efforts were immediately attempted to save Sims’ life, but he ultimately succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead at the scene of the accident.
Without knowing the details of what happened in each of these incidents, I’ll tell you that the probable cause of the mortar-to-the-face injuries was that the victims were carelessly reloading “hot” tubes. See, after you a fire a shell, the lift charge usually leaves a few sparks down in the tube, and if you immediately re-load the tube, these sparks can ignite the shell while you’re still loading it and — BOOM! — there goes your face.
The way to avoid that happening is to shake out the tube after each shell, and give it a minute or so to cool off before you re-load, but too many people never even think of this risk or how to avoid it. In the case of the Indiana man who died of abdomen injuries from a mortar explosion, I’ll guess that was a “flower pot” caused by inserting the shell into the tube upside down, and that he did not “light fuse and get away.”
See, that’s what I mean when I say “proximity matters.” Standing right next to a mortar is just not smart. The fuse on a consumer shell usually has a four- or five-second burn time, which is enough time for even a slow person to get 50 or 100 feet away before it fires and yet, it is apparently common practice for people to stand just a few feet away while firing these things, which means accidents can be fatal.
There is no such thing as risk-free fireworks, of course, and in a country where many thousands of people celebrate Fourth of July by lighting off fireworks, some number of injuries are inevitable. But common-sense precautions — e.g., “light fuse and get away” — can reduce the risk.
The 24-year-old NHL player who was killed in an accident in Michigan died from a fireworks mortar blast and chest trauma, medical examiner sayshttps://t.co/aa4TJjUx0g
Every year around Fourth of July, we hear the same thing from police and other public officials: “Consumer fireworks are dangerous! Leave fireworks to the professionals!” These lectures are always most strident where consumer fireworks are illegal. In New York City this year Comrade De Blasio, who can’t do anything right, created “a multi-agency task force to crack down on illegal fireworks sales.”
But but but . . . I thought police were bad?
Isn’t that the whole point of #BlackLivesMatter? If Democrats want to “defund the police,” who are you supposed to call if people are setting off illegal fireworks in your neighborhood? But facts and logic have never counted for much with liberals. On the one hand, Democrats want a draconian regime of total government control, while simultaneously complaining that police — you know, the people who actually enforce all these government regulations — are brutal racists, because people of color get arrested for disobeying the law. But I digress . . .
The assertion that fireworks are so dangerous that they can only be trusted to license professionals is not a slam-dunk case, because sometimes the licensed professionals screw it all up:
Plano’s All American 4th fireworks show did not go off as expected Saturday night.
Around 9 p.m., about 19 minutes in the show that was being held on Lavon Farms, a 6-inch mortar exploded inside its launching tube resulting in a chain reaction of explosions from nearby mortars, according to Plano Fire-Rescue.
In videos posted to social media, fireworks appeared to also shoot off toward the crowd.
The show was stopped about six minutes prior to the grand finale.
No injuries or damage to structures were reported, but several acres of the field burned. It took firefighters about an hour to contain the blaze and extinguish the hot spots, the department said.
Fortunately no one was reported injured by that mishap. During our show Saturday night in West Virginia, one 16-shot cake in the finale tipped over and sent a couple of shots sideways, but it went toward the back — away from the crowd — and caused no damage. Here’s a photo from the set up, showing my son and one of his friends at work:
Click the image to see full size. What they’re doing is using white “quick” fuse — which burns instantaneously — to connect two mortar racks to a finale board filled with repeater cakes. Video of the show is in two parts. Here is the first 10 minutes:
And here is the one-minute Grand Finale:
After the show was over, I was sitting down on the steps enjoying a cold beverage when a little girl walked by with her mother and the girl said, “That was epic!” That made all the planning worth it.
