Boomsday is gonna be a blast

Downtown Knoxville first exploded with Boomsday fireworks on Labor Day Sept. 5, 1988. Nineteen years ago, the event utilized 6,000 pounds of explosives. That total has since grown to more than 12,000 pounds and has become the biggest Labor Day weekend fireworks event in the South.

Lansden Hill, president of LaFollette-based Pyro Shows, says it’s hard to even remember that first Boomsday.

“In the beginning we were just hoping to draw a crowd,” says Hill. “We weren’t sure that fireworks would offer enough of an attraction for East Tennesseans to tear up their Labor Day weekend.”

He believes the public’s memory of the nightly fireworks at the 1982 World’s Fair helped ignite interest in the first Boomsday. Whatever the reason, the event far exceeded expectations. Thousands flocked to the event.

“Suddenly the challenge was how to handle a crowd that was much bigger than anticipated,” says Hill.

The event now draws a crowd of between 200,000 and 350,000 each year and has become a daylong celebration with music and food vendors lining Neyland Drive in anticipation of the explosions. The 2007 Boomsday included food and beverage vendors, a petting zoo, pony rides, an aerial demonstration and a stage for community performers.

Finding the perfect vantage point to view the spectacular has always been a challenge. While most patrons take in Boomsday on Neyland Drive and in parking lots at the University of Tennessee, some have found other avenues.

Early on in the event, East Tennessee Baptist Hospital had to hire extra security after the staff realized that Boomsday patrons were coming into the hospital to watch the event from the hospital windows.

“Then people were scheduling elective surgeries and asking for western-facing rooms,” says Hill.

Boomsday has undergone several changes and experienced several challenges over the past two decades.

In 2002, the Gay Street Bridge was closed for repairs and made routing traffic before and after the even more of a headache than it already was. That same year a skydiver died in a failed landing into the Tennessee River. In 2004, the event was moved to Saturday after a contract with ESPN had the University of Tennessee football team change their home opener game to Sunday. When the football schedule returned to Saturday the following year, positive response to an earlier Boomsday inspired the event moving to Sunday night.

The 2006 Boomsday expanded into a three-day event. However, that boom went bust, losing approximately $100,000.

The cost of the fireworks is taken care of by the event’s primary sponsor, Jeep Chrysler, which has presented the event for several years.

Hill says some aspects of putting on Boomsday have become easier. Pyro Shows now uses computers to key music to the explosions. And, Hill says, years of experience have figured into making the event run smoothly.

“Half of the people working on this Boomsday worked at the first one,” says Hill. “I look back at pictures of us and I’m surprised they let us do it at all — We looked like a bunch of kids.”

Pyro Shows stages many events around the country — including the Fourth of July celebration in Washington, D.C. However, he says, while the Fourth of July event uses more actual fireworks, Boomsday has a greater variety of fireworks.

“Because of security in D.C., our choreography is very limited,” says Hill. “It’s sort of like a painter and you tell him to paint a picture, but you can only use blue, green and yellow, as opposed to one where you say, ‘Use any color you want.’ We think Boomsday presents the most interesting picture. … If I invite a client to see our best work, we take them to Boomsday.”

Hill travels all over the world looking at new fireworks, but he says he always has Knoxville in mind.

“Every time I see something new I think, ‘How would this look off the Henley Street Bridge?’ ”