Tonight's their night

COEUR d'ALENE - They are the guys behind tonight's fireworks show.

Josh Vaughan and Ryan Austin, contractors for Olympia-based Entertainment Fireworks, get high on the roar of the crowd at their explosive Fourth of July performances.

"That's our drug basically," said Vaughan, 35, of Spokane.

He added, "As long as that crowd is out there, horns are honking, people are screaming, and everybody's going by in their boats yelling 'Awesome job,'" they're satisfied.

Austin, 27, of Prosser, Wash., said, "If we can hear the crowd during the show, we know we're doing a good job, and we keep up the pace."

He added, "We do have a script, but we might change something, depending on how the crowd reacts."

It takes Vaughan and Austin, with the help of some others, about three to four days to stage the approximately 20-minute Coeur d'Alene show.

Vaughan has handled the Coeur d'Alene Fourth of July show several times, but this will be Austin's first. They also have done dozens of other shows in the Inland Northwest over the past several years.

Austin, a self-described nerd, works as an information technology professional in the Tri-Cities area when he's not exploding shells. He has also spent time as a volunteer firefighter.

"I took a week off from work to come out and do this," he said Wednesday.

Vaughan, who rocks a mohawk haircut, makes a living as a sheet-metal worker, and spends his free time outdoors hunting or fishing.

The whole show is sequenced by a computer programmer from Entertainment Fireworks. The programmer holes up in an office for two to three days to get the job done.

"He's looking at how long it takes a shell to go up, break and disappear," Vaughan said. He takes into consideration the budget, time of show, colors and other factors.

The programmer choreographed more than 900 shells for tonight's show. The largest shell to explode tonight, with a 12-inch diameter, costs about $3,000. Vaughan said they've fired bigger, including a massive 24-inch shell in Usk, Wash., which cost about $7,000.

A 12-inch shell soars to about 1,000 feet before exploding. Everyone on a fireworks crew usually signs the show's biggest shell.

The shells, made in China, have some long and exotic-sounding names: Glittering coconut tree, grasshopper green chrysanthemum, blue ghost shell, or one that sounds like red-winged with blue pistol with brocade octopus chrysanthemum.

"You're going to see a lot of flowery-style-type shells," Vaughan said. Additionally, "I've shot some heart shells, I shot a smiley face shell, (and) dragon eggs."

To ready for tonight, they built eight wooden boxes on a metal barge docked near Lake Coeur d'Alene's Spokane River outlet. The boxes are loaded with sand and hold the mortars and shells in position.

In the days leading up to the show, Vaughan and Austin sleep in a rented moving truck parked by the barge, keeping watch over the thousands of dollars in fireworks.

The shells from one box are all fired, then those in the next box. Groups of shells are sometimes linked together so when one is lit they all launch together to explode in what are called "finale chains."

While being tugged out on the lake in their barge, families floating by in boats usually shout encouragement as the fireworks crew progresses to its position. Vaughan said he's usually grinning from ear to ear by this time.

Once the barge is in position, the crew sits and waits for the phone call ordering the start of the show. Sometimes they can wait for a couple hours, passing the time playing cards.

The first call gives them a two- or five-minute warning. The second call isn't answered.

"Once that phone rings and I see it's their number, I just go," Vaughan said.

On board, the atmosphere is hot, loud and smoky.

"It's controlled chaos, the way I like to put it," Vaughan said. "You got everything going off around you, and you got embers falling on you."

The smell of sulfur hangs in the air.

"You go about two or three months and not smelling the sulfur, and you smell it afterwards and you're just like, 'Ahh, I miss this so much.'"

Dangers come in the form of, among other things, what these professionals call "low breaks," when a shell explodes about eye level.

"And that makes it fun, too," Vaughan said. "It's fun for us, a little bit, as long as we're safe about it."

They wear hearing and eye protection, along with coats and hard-hats.

Before the show there is always some nervous bladder emptying, they confided.

"We call it the 'pre-show pee,'" said Vaughan. "The majority of all pyros get it."

"Also, I like good rock and metal playing before the show," said Austin, who also experiences some hyper-bladder sensitivity. The loud music "just kind of gets you amped up, kind of like you'd see with a football player or wrestler."