MircleWorker said:
Believe me when I say this didn't happen to me, I was just a by-stander. When I was in high school we had a dance studio presenting their annual dance recital. They were using flash pots, rehearsal went great. except the person controlling them never unplugged the control
unit from the wall and the pot was live. Our TD went to refill the pot and never bothered to check the
power situation out. He got burnt.
Let me tell you how these things were designed. It was a single gang electrical box with a light
bulb socket inside. You would have to take an old 1 amp screw
fuse and cut off the plastic top and dump the powder in. Kinda cool in a way. Nowadays hard to find those fuses.
back to my story, He was leaning over the pot screwing in the
fuse when
Wham!!! and he was smoking. He wasn't happy.
This is why there are
pyro accidents and why people get injured or killed or clubs burn to the
ground.
1. The person who made the pots deserves a beating. A
pyro pot should never be live (nor should it have the ability to be live). It is a container, nothing more. An electronic
fuse head should always be used.
2. The person using the
system also deserves a beating as a
pyro system needs to be isolated after the
system has been used and MUST have a key
switch that cuts the
power.
3. The TD can
escape a beating but only because of what happened to him. He should either not be playing with
pyro or should have ensured that the
system was not live. In fact, he should have not been anywhere near it because unless he is operating the
system, he shouldn’t be near it.
It sounds like this was a purely
amateur thing and I am willing to bet that not one of them had any training or held a license. If they did, they do not deserve to, and should have their license revoked. There is a reason why
pyro has to be done by trained professionals – IT CAN KILL PEOPLE.
We all kick up a storm when someone overloads a
circuit, doesn’t use
safety cables or attempts to balance on a ladder that is perched on a chair because it was easier than getting the lift out. Yet when it comes to
pyro, everyone just wants to
play because it is so cool! Ask your TD how cool the burns were or how cool it was to have to hose of his shorts before throwing them into the washing machine.
I hold a professional theatrical
pyro license, as well as a professional fireworks license and have worked in this industry for over a decade. There are too many cowboys out there that think the rules don’t apply to them or simply just ignore them. Every time there is an accident, it makes my life tougher because there are fewer clients that want to risk using
pyro and my insurance premium goes up. There needs to be tighter regulations or more people will get injured.