The barge on the beach may be gone, but the barge in the bay is back for the 31st Honda Celebration of Light fireworks display in the West End.

This year’s competition kicks off with Australia on Saturday night, followed by Mexico on Wednesday, July 26 and the Philippines Saturday, July 29.

Friday morning the media got a tour of the fireworks barge, which is sitting on piles driven into the seabed about 300 metres off English Bay beach.

It takes about three days to set up each display.

“Fireworks are fireworks,” said Kelly Guille of Archangel Fireworks, whose 10-person crew helps the four-person team from each country set up.

“But there’s a difference in how they design their shows. A lot of it comes from cultural ways, some is just style. You’ll find that some places tend to be a lot more intricate, some like to have the bigger scenes more often.

“It’s really specific to a country, and often the team itself.”

The Australian team is led by Andrew Howard of Howard and Sons Pyrotechnic, a century old, multi-generational firm. This is his first visit here, but his father and brother have both competed in the Celebration of Light or its previous incarnation, the Symphony of Fire.

“The theme for our show is a bit of a night out at the disco, just a good night out,” said Howard.

“It’s a feel good soundtrack. There are some uniquely Australian songs in the soundtrack, there’s some sound effects in the soundtrack, there’s some Indigenous Australian music. There’s even sound effects of Australian native animals mixed in.

“Overall it’s just a good vibe, a good night out … get up and have a dance and tap your feet.”

The pyrotechnics that zip up into the night sky come from mortars that are sunk into sand on the barge.

“We bury them in sand so if something should detonate it’s not going to effect whatever’s next to it,” explains Guille, a Winnipegger who’s been doing this for 30 years.

There are different sizes of mortar for different pyrotechnics, but Howard said “the chemistry and the physics is the same.”

“We have a fuse that lights a lift charge at the bottom of the shell, which is gunpowder,” he explains.

“Once the shell is at the bottom of the mortar and the gunpowder is initiated, it’s just producing gas and energy. That gas and energy launches the (pyrotechnic) ball.

“It launches it high in the sky, and there’s a time fuse inside the shell that’s burning as the shell travels up. The shells travel up to about 450 feet and then burst.”

Sounds simple, but the fireworks are timed to the music.

“Everything’s timed to the millisecond really,” said Howard. “All the timing is imperative to the show design.”

The three nights of fireworks are expected to draw about 1.3 million people to the West End and Kitsilano. The economic impact of the fireworks is estimated to be $200 million.

Given the current hot, dry weather, officials are urging fans to be prepared with things like sunscreen. Several streets in the West End will be closed to traffic, including Pacific and Beach from Thurlow to Stanley Park, Davie from Burrard to Denman and Denman from Alberni to Beach.

Smoking is banned from the green areas around English Bay. And in case you were wondering, the barge is set up far enough out into the bay that no pyrotechnics is expected to start any fires onshore or in Stanley Park.

“We are in the ocean and we have tested the water, and it is highly fire resistant,” said Guille.

Source: https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/vancouvers-annual-fireworks-competition-gets-underway-this-weekend