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Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007

Daily Archive

The Paper Chase - Pyro Style

Posted by Office-Bob on 02 Jan 2007 | Tagged as: General Craziness, The Church of Pyro

Now that the last fireworks show of the “season” (New Year’s Eve) is over, I wanted to tell you about the fun I had getting my show permit this year.

This was the 6th year I’ve done a show for this particular client and despite the remote location and usually inclement weather (if it’s not cold, it’s cold and wet), it’s something I look forward to for a number of reasons:

1) With some minor exceptions (salutes and shells over 6 inches), everything is hand-fired - by that, I mean I’m out there, flare in hand (well, at the end of a long holder), lighting individual fuses and feeling the THUMP as each shell fires.

2) The scenery is beautiful; The image below will give you an idea is to where I’m located (click to enlarge):



3) The people are very nice; they put me up for the evening on one of their boats and provide me with food and drink (although, of course, I abstain from alcohol until well after the show); this year, it was a lobster dinner, very tasty.

4) Most importantly, they dig the mortars in which means I don’t have to…needless to say, this makes me a happy pyrotechnician.

I knew the permit application process was going to be a bit more difficult this year, not only because I didn’t have very much lead time (about a week) but because I’d been informed that I needed to deal with a different fire dept. than in the past - previous permits had been issued by the North Vancouver Fire Dept. but according to the Commodore of the yacht club, the property was actually under the City of Coquitlam’s jurisdiction.

Armed with this information and all of my supporting documents (permission letter from the yacht club, proof of insurance, copy of my Display Supervisor license and a list of shells being fired) I handed it over to the Coquitlam FD on December 22nd…

…only to be informed on the 27th that it wasn’t their jurisdiction and I should contact the GVRD (Greater Vancouver Regional District).

I did a little research and found that, indeed, the land where the yacht club’s outstation is location was in fact in the GVRD “Electoral Area ‘A’,” whatever that means, so I called the GVRD…

…and was told that they didn’t handle permits and I’d need to contact the provincial Ministry of Forests.

I called the MoF and talked to a very helpful gentleman there who said he’d look into it if I’d send him copies of the paperwork (thank goodness for scanners and e-mail)…

…and was told the next day that they couldn’t issue a permit because there wasn’t enough time to do a site inspection, and I’d need to talk to the North Vancouver Fire Dept. because they’d be the ones responding to a fire anyway.

Okay, so now I’m back to where I started but since I’ve dealt with the NVFD before I should be fine, right?

Right?

Um…nope.

Apparently, despite being issued permits in the past a site inspection was never done, and the captain now in charge of Fire Prevention (the section that handles fireworks permits) wasn’t about to issue a permit without seeing the site; while I completely understand the need for this and his reasoning behind it, we’re now down to the 29th of December with no permit for a show scheduled to happen in 2 days. Solution? Pay a fee to the NVFD so the captain could spend his day off doing the inspection and take him up there by boat…if he was okay with the layout and satisfied that I could meet all safety requirements, he would hand over the permit - and it also gave him a chance to meet me in person.

We went out on the 30th, the location was checked, I answered some questions and finally, satisfied that I knew what I was doing, the permit was handed over - we were back in business!

The show went well although I had a few duds because of an impromtpu downpour that soaked some of the fuses, but most of the shells went off and the big finish - an 8-inch shell - was as spectacular as we’d hoped. The customer and audience were happy, I was happy (although wet and cold), and it would appear that we’ll be able to forgo the site inspection next year as long as the same captain is working in Fire Prevention - however, I will make sure we apply for the permit in plenty of time in case they want to look the place over again because, if they do, with enough advance notice they’ll come out in the NVFD fireboat and we won’t have to pay to have the inspection done.

Happy New Year!

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