Fireworks artist shoots for screams

• By KORAN ADDO
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Jul 4, 2009 - Page: 1B

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David Spear likes to light things on fire, watch them explode and then listen to people scream. It makes him happy, he said.

Generally, one would be wise to be wary of such a person. But Spear, 55, isn’t crazy. He is the chief producer and designer of tonight’s Star-Spangled Celebration fireworks show over the Mississippi River in downtown Baton Rouge.

Some people call setting off fireworks painting the sky. So, think of Spear as an artist, the 4,000 explosives at his disposal as the paint and the night sky over the Mississippi River  waterfront as his canvas.

Since last Saturday, Spear and his crew of seven pyrotechnicians with J&M Displays Inc., of Yarmouth, Iowa, have been planning and prepping the largest fireworks display in the state.

Friday morning, Spear and his crew were busy on their next-to-last 12-hour shift stuffing fireworks shells into mortars.

Each shell resembles a snow cone or a misshapen coconut wrapped in papier-mâché. The mortars, 2 or 3 feet tall and brightly colored, look like enormous shotgun shells.

Tonight at 9 p.m., Spear and his crew will be on a barge in the middle of the Mississippi River wearing earplugs and safety goggles while pushing buttons.

With each push of a button, a bright blue wire with an electrical match head peeking out will light a fuse, Spear said.

The fuse burns as fast as 32 feet per second, igniting a small cone at the bottom of each shell with a boom that Spear said he can feel in his chest every time.

The shells range in diameter from the smallest, which are 3 inches, to the largest — 10-inch shells that can soar 1,000 feet. The shells are filled with a series of “stars” that look like colored marbles sitting on a bed of explosive powder, he said.

When the cone at the bottom of the shell ignites, it creates energy that forces the shell up through the mortar, launching the shell high into the sky.

The shells burst open near the tops of their trajectories, scattering the stars in every direction and painting the sky with colorful spheres as large as two football fields across, he said.

 They have names like red strobe, blue dahlia, lemon flower, silver kamuro and pink peony.