Lighting hits firework - GIF

[suther51]

At the vocational school I went to part time in high school the electronics teacher was related to a local family in the fireworks business. Of the two fireworks shows that I went to that he oversaw, one was hand fired by him with his most experienced helper reloading fired morter tubes. Wasn't the best situation. At one point a morter was lit, the fuse had burned out of sight, and went off just as the helper was loading an adjacent morter tube. He was not physically struck but his arm was still numb or tingley hours later. With so little experience I can not say just how it should have been done differently but obviously things were not as safe as they should have been. Memorably the show went off despite gale force winds and sideways rain. The finally was on a floating dock that had been towed out into the lake. With the rain some of the fuses smoldered and a handful of fireworks went off well after the show was well over. The fire department received calls reporting explosions. It was a wild time.
The other show was much bigger and there was no reloading during the show. Each firework had it's own tube and it was fired electronically timed to music, or so they said. Perhaps "additive substances" made the differance as later I talked to some other people who were there for the live music earlier in the day and they were wowed by the sincronization of the music and fireworks. I did not see much connection between the fireworks and the music. My loss I suppose.
There were several batteries of heavy mortars that were buried in the ground. After the show it was found that a "heavy 8 inch" had detonated in the tube. It looked like the entire hole had been emptied and dumped back in, totally jumbled up. To make matters more memorable the worker who decided to clean it up went at it with a claw hammer as a digging tool. (This might have been more of those "additive substances " at work) My teach advised staying well back as no one knew if there were any live shells in the hole whose wires were cut by the shell that detonated. Intense business all around.
Eric