Fire Chief: Collingswood Fireworks Debris 'Not Typical'

Those of you who attended the Collingswood Fourth of July fireworks spectacular certainly got quite a show. 

The oohs and aahs had turned into an organized break for the exits by the end of the night, however, as fallout from the pyrotechnics blew debris and embers over the crowd.

Collingswood Fire Chief Keith Davis said the incident was weather-related, and not anything for which organizers of the event could have planned.

"It's not typical," Davis told Patch. "It hasn’t happened in a very long time."

Before the show began, Collingswood firefighters supervised a test launch of the explosives, Davis said. At that time, the wind carried it towards Colford Avenue, "where it normally does," he said. Borough fire apparatus were staged there.

"As the fireworks started, that’s the way they were blowing," Davis said. 

"Somewhere in the midst of the beginning of the show, the wind changed direction and started blowing everything in the direction of the stadium," he said.

"Unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about the weather," Davis said, "but how we reacted was to gather the crowd and push them back."

He added that every fireworks show leaves behind debris.

Davis said that the fire department always positions the fireworks launch site well away from the crowd, at a distance greater than that outlined in the fire code. 

As per its usual procedure, he said, the Collingswood Fire Department did a check of the surrounding areas to make sure that no stray embers remained. 

"We always check the whole neighborhood before we leave," Davis said.

Nobody required emergency transportation as a result of the incident, Davis said. 

"We had maybe three people that complained to us that they had some debris in their eye, and once we cleaned that out, they were fine," he said. 

Collingswood has a longstanding relationship with its fireworks vendor, Davis said, "and this was in no way anything that they could have prevented. 

"The stuff was blowing almost all the way back to the gates," he said. "Even if we shut everything down and moved everybody out, it wouldn’t have been far enough."

Davis also added that once the fireworks have been loaded into their launchers, a PVC-tube-and-wood-rack combination, they must be detonated. 

"There’s no physical, safe way to remove those shells and put them back in boxes," he said. "A couple years ago, a thunderstorm was coming, and we were standing there in the rain shooting fireworks off." 

Davis said that the borough takes "every precaution" to maintain its focus on public safety at such events.

"We didn’t believe anyone was in any serious danger," he said. "If we did, we would have stopped the show and evacuated the stadium."