DUBAI: For 17 years, William Prentice, 73, has positioned himself on the wharf near Sheraton off the Dubai Creek from where he oversees the dazzling fireworks put up every year during the Dubai Shopping Festival.
As operations manager of Zarco, the company tasked with creating the month-long fireworks display for the world-famous DSF, Prentice and his men are involved in a lot of painstaking work to make sure everything works according to plan.
"I have to make sure the barge is at the correct spot," said Prentice. Minutes before firing, he (or one of his men) phones the air traffic control tower at Dubai International Airport to make sure no aircraft is nearby. "Most of the time they give us the green light. On rare occasions, we're asked to delay the firing by a few minutes — when a helicopter is flying overhead," he said.
XPRESS visited the barge to get a first-hand look at how Prentice and his men weave their magic each night of the DSF.
The showers of glittering colours -- which in reality are carefully choreographed explosions — do look dazzling to the eye and may get over in a few minutes, but for the technicians who undergo rigorous training and must pass a police certification test, it's quite a challenge to put it all together.
There's painstaking and dangerous work involved in a small barge packed with up to 800 pieces of explosives. "A fireworks shell is a raw explosive. It's lethal," said Diwas Mahat, Zarco's operations supervisor and one of the seven full-time Asian (Indian, Nepali and Filipino) technicians handling over 2,000 types of fireworks.
Their job requires keen attention to detail. To produce a different show each day, the shows are plotted using the FireOne computer simulation software. Between preparation from 8am and firing at 8.30pm — comes the hard work.
Technicians prime hundreds of fibre-glass cylinders of various sizes which hold the explosive shells linked together by a pair of 1.5km copper wires hooked to a control box. The Dubai Customs quay next to Al Maktoum Bridge is where technicians do their work. By around 7.30pm, the barge leaves and drops anchor in the creek.
Tricky part
"This is a tricky part because of the strong current with the change of tides," said Prentice. "It takes us about 15 minutes to get the position right before dropping anchor. If you're out of position, you could damage other boats or the sparks would fall on people."
Thankfully, no major accidents have befallen him and his men — or the spectators.
Mahat said this year they had fireworks from China and Spain.
Technicians on site wear mandatory safety gear and hide with their box behind the barge engine room during firing. "We have to be here [on the barge] to ensure the timing is right and see the show with our own eyes.
"We handle raw explosives on the ground. Only when it gets into the sky does it become entertainment," said Mahat, whose reward is cheers from people at the end of each show. "It's a full day's work paid in five minutes," he said.
