Story and photos by Lily Jaquith
Western Washington University communications intern

Twelve people, 10 hours and a few hundred pounds of explosives. Those are the statistics behind the scenes at the Edmonds Kind of Fourth Fireworks show that is set to blast off at dusk tonight at Edmonds’ Civic Field at 6th and Bell.

My Edmonds News stopped by the field Wednesday morning to interview Mike Taylor, known as the “head pyro” for Entertainment Fireworks Company, which is in charge of this year’s show.

Q: What’s the process?
A: It starts with permits and getting people together. Contacting the company and saying you want a show. Then they send a crew like us out with the product to assemble it and put it together and shoot it.

Q: How many people do you use?
A: A show like this, we got about 12 of us today. We’re just taking our time… because we did most of our setup yesterday. And so today we’re bringing in the fireworks, we’re nesting them on top of the tubes. Making sure everything is covered, and we’ve got a shell for every tube, and putting it together. And then we’ll be running wires, it’s all done electrically.

Q: How many hours does it take?
A: We spent about five hours yesterday and today it’ll be roughly four to five hours, just getting everything fine tuned. With it being an electrical show (meaning everything’s controlled electronically), it takes a little bit longer to put them together.  A “hand fire show” would be a lot easier, just bringing in tubes, putting shells in the thing and then hitting it with a flare when it comes time. It’s being done up to music, so…there’s that electrical agent source that’ll coordinate it a little bit more with the music.

Q: How many pounds of explosives are involved?
A: A few hundred. Each shell is approximately four ounces, because they’re three-inch shells. We have approximately 200-some shells. And then what we have are our “cakes” — you light more fuses for a multi-shot. And some of them are five or about 10 pounds each box.