The Big Bang
Gregg Chamberlain
Staff Writer

Fire Chief Wade Rota knows what he likes most about the fireworks show on Saturday night.

"The bombshells," Rota says with a grin. "The ones that have the big bang — the bigger, the better."

But, as Rota agrees, there's a lot of gruntwork on the ground involved in putting the fire in the sky.

Revelstoke has enjoyed fireworks for the last couple of years as part of various celebrations such as the city's centennial in 1999 and during Glacier Challenge weekend.
By good luck, one of the top pyrotechnics display experts lives and works out of Nakusp, just an hour's drive south, including the ferry hop across Shelter Bay. He looks after dealing with the fireworks suppliers in Calgary, drafting out a display plan and handing that over to the Revelstoke fire department which acts as the city's representative for the legal paperwork.


Time Review file photo


Time Review file photo

The heavy work begins a few days before D-Day — Display Day — with getting the mortar racks shipped out from Calgary and arranging for a load of sand to be dumped at the launch site beside the Columbia River.

Rota and fellow fireman John Scarcelli are the chief local assistants to the pyrotechnics expert and his aide. They both are trained and qualified level one Fireworks Supervisors which means they are allowed to help handle the explosives.

Assisting them is a crew of half a dozen volunteers who assemble the wooden racks for the mortars and work the shovels to bank the sand around the Roman candle tubes.
"We're talking a full day's work here on the Saturday," Rota says.

One thing he himself, from a professional point view, finds fascinating is how the fireworks themselves are assembled.

"How all the chemicals are combined to get the effect desired and then to see the end result is quite spectacular."

Come see for yourself Saturday night at Centennial Park.


Workers prepare fireworks' mortars for firing.