By Paul Sand
The News Tribune
Copyright 2007 The News Tribune
All Rights Reserved
TACOMA, Wash. — Their technical names don’t do justice to the spectacles they provide.
Pyrotechnic expert Brian Panther, perhaps sensing this, took an extra step in describing the Mortar Hit Type III to the crowd of fire officials inside a cavernous, buttoned-up Tacoma Dome.
“It’s what we sometimes call a mini-nuclear fireball,” he said seconds before he flipped a switch, creating a mushroom cloud explosion on the Dome’s floor.
The indoor display was just one part of a three-day pyrotechnics training seminar for fire officials that concluded Wednesday afternoon with a flame display and tutorial that would have made KISS roadies smile.
About 40 fire inspectors, including some from Tacoma and Pierce County, took the training course, which teaches the ins and outs of pyrotechnic displays - the deafening booms, cascading sparks and 20-foot-tall flames - in a setting where officials can ask questions, learn the regulations and not be under pressure to simply sign off and get on with the show.
Greg Smith is chief of King County Fire District 44, which inspects about six events with pyrotechnics a year at the White River Amphitheater. He took photos of the flame cubes - the boxes that shoot vertical fire - and enjoyed looking at the gear without the distractions of a stage crew, gigantic guitar amps and miles of wiring.
“We wanted to take the guys to get a real good hands-on look, and learn the lingo,” Smith said. “So, when we go out, we know what we’re looking at.”
Panther, a trainer with Iowa-based nonprofit Fireworks Education & Safety Training Inc., encouraged the students to touch the pyro devices and even let them press a button to create propane-fueled rolling fireballs.
Besides the event’s interactive aspect, it was likely the only training seminar in Tacoma this week to reference Ozzy Osbourne’s burning-cross stage prop.
LOCAL CONNECTION
The training was brought to Tacoma by Rick Olsen, a former firefighter on the Key Peninsula who now runs Pyro & Fire FX in Gig Harbor. He stages pyrotechnics - and works with out-of-state acts to get the required permits to set them off - at the Dome, KeyArena and elsewhere in Washington.
Fire officials are often busy conducting building inspections and doing other work, so they don’t get enough exposure to pyrotechnics and consequently might not be up on new codes and regulations, Olsen said.
“I want them to be educated,” he said.
That’s why he hires FEST to conduct the training. The company was founded by Scott Bemer, a firefighter in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, following the 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island that killed 100 people during a show by 1980s rockers Great White. The blaze caused changes nationwide and in Tacoma, in the enforcement and creation of codes related to club, sprinkler and pyrotechnic safety.
Panther and Bemer on Tuesday used that watershed moment in American fire history to drive home the importance of pyrotechnic safety and the danger that can result if the rules aren’t followed. They even went as far as to show unedited footage of the fatal club fire.
“People see the TV version, but you don’t get the actual impact ... people screaming, the devastation of what really happened,” Olsen said.
And Panther pointed out the particular pyro device - a spark-producing “gerb” - that ignited the club fire.
“This was the monster that started the fire that killed all the people,” he told the group.
‘THIS ONE WAS MADE FOR AC/DC’
Tuesday’s tutorial and “show and tell table” of pyrotechnic devices was especially interesting to Mike Patti and Bill Steele, who are deputy fire marshals in the Pierce County Fire Prevention Bureau. They don’t deal much with rock-band stage theatrics, but they do inspect a large number of public fireworks displays each Fourth of July, Patti said.
“It’s just more to bring us up to date on the latest techniques and materials,” Patti said of the training.
Panther, who also does pyro work with his own company for bands including God-smack and Nickelback, clearly enjoyed telling the group how each device worked, its dangers and even which bands had used it.
“This one was made for AC/DC,” he said at one point.
Just before setting off concussion mortars, which make an extremely loud boom, Panther warned the crowd to plug their ears: “They’re going to sound insanely loud.”
The Dome shook, and the echo reverberated for seconds after the loudest of the bunch.
On Wednesday afternoon, after classroom training and viewing slides on flame effects, the students walked to the Dome from the adjacent Best Western Tacoma Dome Hotel to see the real thing.
Panther discussed the basics of flame effects - how the propane valves should function, how different amounts of pressure affect a fire’s height and how you create a column of fire versus a fireball. Hint: You just hold the button longer.
Then he turned it over to them.
With everyone a safe distant away from the four flame cubes on the Dome’s floor, a handful of the students lined up to push the fire button and shoot the flames. Each smiled afterward.
“Like kids in a candy store,” one man said to another.