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25,000 lbs of fireworks, 1 green button that says "GO"

E-mail|Link|Comments () July 1, 2009 09:03 PM

By Andrew Ryan, Globe Staff

The three rusty, groaning barges anchored today in the middle of the Charles River have all the glitz and excitement of a construction site: power tools, mounds of sand, rough-cut wooden framing, a dozen workers in hard hats, and a porta potty.

The difference: 25,000 pounds of fireworks, five miles of yellow wire, and one green button that says, "GO."

"It's a huge undertaking -- huge to set up and big to tear down, " said Art Rozzi, a soft-spoken, fourth-generation purveyor of handmade Italian fireworks whose great-grandfather learned the trade in a town outside Naples.

After five days of hammering and sawing and unloading three tractor trailers filled with explosives and electronics, the crew today began the finesse work. That meant stuffing more than 5,000 mortar tubes with the charges, stars, and bursts that will illuminate the sky for 21 minutes on Saturday night.

The work is tedious, using yellow wire to lower hand-sized sacks of pyrotechnics into tube after tube. The mortars vary in size, from the 3-to-4 inch front line that throws colors at an angle some 400 feet in the air, to the 12-inch behemoths buried in barrels of sand that blast fireworks 1,200 feet above the river.

"I'd like the fog to go away," said production coordinator Bernie Durgin, who glanced up at the low, grey sky. "The big shells will disappear up in that fog."

No amount of planning -- or explosives -- can influence the weather, and for today the crew enjoyed the cool temperature that came with the foggy rain. The forecast for Saturday night called for clear skies and a low of 60 degrees, a perfect canvas for Rozzi Famous Fireworks of Loveland, Ohio.

"This is really exciting for me to do this," Rozzi said, the mist collecting on the Red Sox hat he bought at Logan International Airport for his first fireworks spectacular on the Esplanade. "Boston is a premier show. In my eyes, it's one of the shows mentioned when they mention the Fourth of July."