SELMA, N.C. — There’s a lot of work that goes into putting on fireworks shows around the Fourth of July, but the No. 1 priority is keeping everyone safe.
“It's always, always looking, and you never look up,” Brannan Barbee said. “So we fire, and then we'll shoot easily 300 shells, and the only ones we'll see is the last ones in the sky.”
Barbee is the assistant fire chief in Selma, and he said it takes a lot of concentration and awareness to put on a fireworks show. Fireworks are beautiful, but the explosions require a lot of safety precautions and a lot of work behind the scenes to make sure they only go off with a bang when they’re supposed to.
Barbee has a special red card license to put on a show like this. In North Carolina, it is illegal to set off any fireworks that leave the ground without a proper license. To get that red card, he had to go through an eight-hour class, pass two written tests and a practical test and help out with three shows.
Barbee said he used to help his dad set off fireworks back when there were no rules, but now he has his license so he can continue to enjoy the process.
“It can be very intense,” Barbee said. “There's a lot of things going off. Normally we have one or two shooters … and we'll have somebody here tonight that's going to be sitting off in the back with a fire extinguisher. And their job is really just to watch us.”
During his 15 years as a firefighter, Barbee has seen a lot of fires started by unsafe fireworks.
His best advice is to leave it up to the professionals and enjoy the show.
Barbee says if you do buy the smaller, legal fireworks from one of the tents across the state, make sure there are no holes in the packaging and that they have proper fuses.
When setting them off, do it away from houses, cars and people on ground that can’t catch fire like dirt, asphalt or concrete.
And when you’re done, soak the fireworks with water to prevent anything from relighting.