Pyrotech Wizards Wow Thousands

From a rocky knoll high above New Haven, a squad of explosives experts carefully set their charges. At the signal, they unleashed a barrage of artillery that sent explosions cascading through the sky toward the city below.

It wasn’t a reenactment of a cannon battle from the American Revolution. It was a celebration of the start of that revolution — the annual Fourth of July fireworks.

The display brought an estimated 2,000 to 3,000 people to the top of East Rock Thursday evening, while hundreds more looked on from fields below.

It was the biggest fireworks show in years, costing $35,000 instead of the usual $25,000. Christy Hass said she requested that it be bigger this year since so many City Hall staff are retiring, including the mayor.

The 23-minute display was the result of a full day of work in the hot sun by Phil Gauvin and his crew of pyrotechnicians, who carefully wired all 1,140 fireworks they shot off Thursday night.

Gauvin was at the controls at 9:15 p.m., carefully pacing the display so that the rhythm of the show was just right: not too slow, not too fast, building to a frenetic finale capped by two enormous blasts, the biggest of the night.

As a second-generation pyrotechnician, with years in the fireworks business, Gauvin has learned how to orchestrate a winning fireworks performance. And to do it on very little sleep, multiple nights in a row.

As it turns out, July 4th is a busy time of year for fireworks companies. Atlas PyroVision the New Hampshire-based company Gauvin works for, is putting on hundreds of shows this week. Gauvin did Stratford’s fireworks display Wednesday night, a job that left him only a couple of hours to sleep before he had to start setting up New Haven’s show Thursday morning.

Just before 11 a.m., Gauvin and his eight-man crew were established on Snake Hill, which rises just to the east of East Rock. Gauvin said he was running on Red Bull and caffeine pills.

Keith Dagenais and Eric Jobson laid out racks containing short lengths of high-density polyethylene (HDPE) pipe, the cannons out of which the 600-shot grand finale would blast into the air.

Each HDPE pipe is loaded with a single shell, with diameters of shells and pipes ranging from 2.5 inches up to 10 inches.

Gauvin (at left in photo) pointed to a stack of white boxes — the fireworks. ​“This is not your consumer stuff you buy from Walmart,” he said. All the explosives are imported from China, he said. Transporting and handling requires permits and insurance and licenses. The fireworks are stored in a corrugated metal container lined with an inch and a half of plywood on all sides.

Gauvin said you must always ​“place” a box of fireworks. ​“Never slide it.” Sliding can create static electricity that could trigger the electronic fuse inside each shell.

Up the hill from the munitions cache was the ​“firing trailer,” a set of HDPE pipes already laid out on a trailer. David Sokoloff and Tim Tiedemann were attaching orange wires to each shell. The wires run to a ​“module” a kind of fuse box that is then connected to a main control panel.

The biggest tubes, the eight- and 10-inch ones, were half buried in sand. ​“This sucker detonates in the gun, it’s going to blow everything to pieces,” Gauvin said.

Fireworks is a dangerous business. Gauvin has a lumpy scar on the back of his right shoulder, from the time that a 12-inch shell exploded just after leaving the tube, rather than 1,000 feet in the air, and Gauvin caught some shrapnel.

When it’s time to start the show, Gauvin said he’s a safe distance away, with his eyes and ears protected.

After all the fireworks are wired, the firing is a matter of pushing buttons on the main control panel. There’s an art to it. It requires a sense of the rhythm of a proper fireworks display. Set them off too slow and people are bored; too fast and it’s over too soon, Gauvin said.

“You need to have a true feeling for it,” he said.

As Gauvin and his crew labored through the day to prepare the show, others were getting ready for the big event, too. By 8 p.m., between 2,000 and 3,000 people were gathered on top of East Rock, estimated Haas.

Jackie Rawlings took a picture of the view, wearing her Old Glory dress.

American flags were also on display in hat form.

People rode on a wagon pulled by two enormous horses that Kay Perdue and 2‑year-old Odysseus Finn Szarabajka inspected up close.

People danced wildly to classic rock covers pounded out by Branford’s Hit List.

Chef Anthony Foster was doing a brisk business of all-beef hot dogs. He said he’d lost count of how many he’d sold from his cart, which he said is usually set up by the AT&T building downtown. Dozens of people were also lined up at an ice-cream truck and at Newton and Patricia Carroll’s kettle corn stand. Newton (pictured in his July 4th finery) said he went through 100 pounds of popcorn.

At 9:10 p.m., at Hass’ signal, the first fireworks went off.

As the bombs burst in air, the rockets’ red glare illuminated the upturned smiling faces below.

The brightly lit Soldiers and Sailors monument stood in the foreground as explosions filled the air.

People pulled out their cell phones to capture the memory with a photograph.

The grand finale drew whoops and applause from the crowd. As soon as the last two enormous booms faded, people made for the door.

They were funneled into a single exit, where school buses carried people down to the parking lot. It was a very long wait for some, and the crowd grumbled and grew antsy.

As people made their ways home, the booming sound of fireworks continued throughout town as celebrating neighbors lit off their own pyrotechnic displays to mark the 4th of July.