The Freedom Festival Stadium of Fire show plans to heat up fans with fireworks, Natalie Cole, the Jets and other crowd pleasers Friday night.
More than 100 crew members are laboring in the hot sun from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily to finish preparations for Friday's show. Many workers took vacation time from their usual jobs to help out.Scaffolding needs to be set up and stabilized, a stage needs to be built on top of the sacred turf of the football field and thousands of fireworks need to be placed in their precise locations before Friday afternoon. Oh, and the performers need to run through a dress rehearsal, too.
Brad Bone, fireworks director, has been coordinating fireworks and music for Friday's show since January. Each second of the music was matched to specific fireworks months ago, he said. Since then, crews have been assembling the fireworks piece by piece.
Each sparkle of the 25 picture billboards has been placed by hand - that's more than 506,000 tubes of explosives. The Liberty Bell, Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Civil War, Arches and This Is The Place Monument are some of the scenes depicted in fireworks this year.
An electrical engineer coordinates the wiring and fuses of the fireworks. Some fuses burn as fast as 60 feet per second, but others don't burn that quickly, so the different burn rates must be accounted for as the fireworks are linked together.
Because the timing is so intricate, a master computer handles the timing of the show. It's simply not possible to have crew members running around in the south bleachers with a lighter to ignite each display. So the computer actually ignites all of the fireworks, the smaller ones inside the stadium, and the larger ones located across the street on the lawn by the BYU baseball diamond and track.
Despite the danger of the large explosives, Bone's proud to show he still has 10 fingers after working for 14 years as a fireworks coordinator.
"It's a business that as long as you maintain your respect, you're just fine," said Bone.
In addition, fire marshals, the Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, the Department of Transportation and other regulatory agencies keep an eye on preparations for the program. Extinguishers are kept on hand at all times, and the night of the show, observers will be stationed both inside and outside the stadium to watch for falling ashes and fires. A small fire station will be set up in the stadium parking lot in case of emergency.
But some of Friday's heat won't be coming from the fireworks. Natalie Cole, the Jets and the Air Force will all be part of the show in Cougar Stadium.
Cole is the daughter of legendary Nat King Cole. She has won 12 Grammy Awards and sold more than 32 million albums during her career. As she sings famous pieces such as "Unforgettable," "This Can't Be Love," and "For Sentimental Reasons," fireworks will shoot off behind her in time with the music.
The Jets will be performing a warm-up show prior to Cole's performance. The Jets are a family group. Seven of the 17 Wolfgramm siblings sing in the band. The family was raised in Salt Lake City but later moved to Minneapolis. Eight of their singlessuch as "Crush on You" and "Rocket to U," were listed in the Top 10.
Members from the Hill Air Force Base will be on hand to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Air Force. Dick Nourse, KSL news anchor, will give a special presentation titled "I Am Old Glory" and F-16 jets are expected to do a flyover.
"I think this show's going to be kind of an emotional one. It's more from the heart," said Marilyn Toone, director and writer of the Stadium of Fire show.