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Fireworks organiser: ‘Malfunctions cannot be foreseen’
The organiser of Thursday evening’s fireworks display on Millennium Square which saw some fireworks shoot into the crowd has explained what went wrong.
In a statement, Matthew Tosh – a freelance pyrotechnician who was supervising the display carried out by Skyburst – wrote:
We are looking into what happened last night as we (the entire team that I work with) take safety extremely seriously. This includes full safety checks before and after every show.
is needed now More than ever
As someone who is passionate about fireworks and safety, the last thing I want to see is anything go wrong during a display.
We are in the business of entertaining people safely. It’s a simple as that. To do this requires a huge amount of preparation, risk assessments, even mathematical modelling of where our debris patterns go, knowing the individual products that we are working with and how they perform.
Each firework display is designed using materials specifically suited to each site, taking into account prevailing wind direction, audience location and the surroundings.
Once we are on site, the risk assessment process continues and this includes pre show safety checks to ensure that the fireworks are safe to fire.
We continue to monitor fireworks during and after a show for safety.
Very occasionally, a firework malfunctions, as happened last night and this cannot be foreseen. The fault occurred at the end of the show, and so firing ceased anyway, leaving the already ignited fireworks to finish, as was witnessed.
We do everything we can prior to firing a show to minimise potential problems and, if we have any element of doubt, we do not fire at all. However, if a firework itself goes wrong, it can sometimes even catch the professionals out.
As an industry, we pride ourselves on our attention to detail from planning through to post show evaluations. As a result, we investigate any display issues fully, which is exactly what we are doing in light of the At-Bristol show.
It can appear frightening if you see a firework go wrong. We are constantly reviewing processes to ensure that these kinds of issues do not occur often and are looking into what, if anything, can be learned from last night.
Main photo from www.matthewtosh.com
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