From the San Diego Union: The men behind the fireworks companies that gave thousands of Fourth of July onlookers the now-infamous “Bay Boom bust” were full of apologies Thursday.
“I
apologize to everyone in San Diego,” said August Santore, co-owner of
New Jersey-base Garden State Fireworks, which was hired to run the
synchronized fireworks show above San Diego Bay....
Garden State had placed four
barges full of fireworks mortar-launchers on the bay and had a fifth
installation on the end of the Imperial Beach pier. All five locations
were supposed to start the show simultaneously at 9 p.m. for an
estimated 500,000 people that lined the shores.
The show was expected to last 17 minutes and be simulcast to music on 105.7 FM, according to the Big Bay Boom organizers.
A
single shell was fired as a signal to set the timing. Santore gave that
signal from the roof of the Hilton Bayfront. He said a computer glitch,
an undetected corruption of that initial signal, “told” 7,000 fireworks
shells to go off at once.
"It
was a ball of massive amounts of fireworks, just imagine 16 and-a-half
minutes of fireworks being basically sent basically up in 30 seconds,”
Santore said.
Well, it was probably the best 15 seconds or so of fireworks in history but if I made a day of it and wanted to see 17 minutes of fireworks only see about 15 seconds, I would have been disappointed.
But mistakes happen and the company said they would go back next year and do the show for free. Apparently there was a virus in the computer software, causing the whole thing to go up at 1 time.
But it was the best 15 seconds of fireworks I have ever seen.
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