Stadium of Fire

Stadium of Fire is a Fourth of July production put on each year in Provo City. I have been involved with this production for over twenty years and I always look forward to it even though it means long hours and always the possibility of something going wrong. Over the years, I've been able to work with and meet several entertainment stars such as Alan Osmond who was the original producer of the show. This series of photos was taken during an attempt to set a world record for the number of firecrackers set off in a single showing. One million fire crackers were strung together over the course of several days and then suspended on scaffolding. The effect was supposed to start with the ignition of the first fire cracker which would then start a chain reaction to ignite the rest. It was supposed to take about two minutes starting with some small pop - pops then eventually building up to a roar and then dieing back down to small pops before it finished. Instead, the whole thing went off in under twelve seconds. The heat was so intense that people on the other side of the stadium felt the heat wave roll across the heads. Dick Nourse, a local news anchor who was the MC for the show, was on the mid-field and he got a light first degree burn(like a sunburn) to his face. I was standing on the sideline about midfield where the production crew was. My job was to relay information to them and to make sure that if the order was given to shut down the show that it happened. Nicolas was with me that year on the field. I had moved forward a bit to observe the effect and when this thing went, my eyes went wide and I threw Nick behind me and began backing up. It was over fairly quickly and then I remember just hearing a silence in the stadium. I looked over at the main pyro-technician and Alan Osmond and they both had a wide-eyed stunned look on their faces then slowly the crowd began to clap which erupted into a huge applause. Both Alan and the pyro guy looked at each other and just sort of wiped their brows in a sigh of relief. We had fire crews up close to the firecrackers with hose lines and I first thought that maybe they had been taken out by the conflagration but everything went over the top of them so they were fine. After reviewing the effect, we realized that by lighting the bottom firecracker that a thermal column built up which rose up through the array of firecrackers and just took all of them fairly quickly. I wonder what this year will bring?