At an unaddressed location in the Mojave Desert, a small group gathered to test new fireworks for the Macy’s 4th of July show in New York City. The mid-June test near Lucerne Valley is one of the final stages in the almost year-long planning process for the nation’s largest pyrotechnics show. As the summer sun finally set, the control table began to count down: three .
.. two .
.. one.
Fire. Boom. A single firework lit up the sky.
A chorus of “wows” followed as it slowly dissipated. Then another. And another.
And another. No two quite alike: some larger, some multicolored, some that divided into smaller fireworks as they exploded. The team kept going for more than an hour.
The goal of the test is to time the fireworks correctly, said Will Coss, executive producer of the Macy’s 4th of July Fireworks. At a Monday night test in the desert, the team tried out more than 200 brand-new shells — a small sampling of what is to come on Independence Day, Coss added. Gary Souza, a pyrotechnic designer for Pyro Spectaculars by Souza, said about 30% of the fireworks they were testing were unseen in the United States.
Gary, along with brother Jim, represents the fourth generation of the 100-year-old family business. The fifth and sixth generations of the family also were present at the test. Souza and Macy’s have been working together for decades; the teams are in “lockstep,” Coss said.
“It’s really evolved into more of a friendship,” said Jim, who’s president and CE.
