Anyone who’s ever sat around a hibachi table knows what it’s like to feel the heat and hear the sizzle of a big — but controlled — ball of fire. Now imagine that times about 1,000.
Maybe not as much sizzle, but a heck of a lot more heat.
That’s what Wooster’s annual Fireball Festival introduced to area fireworks fans. With the addition of fireballs to the display, people have experienced the world’s biggest hibachi grill, only without having to catch shrimp in their mouths.
“People loved it,” said Gil Ning, president of the Wooster Fireworks Foundation. “I was getting inquiries: ‘Did somebody get hurt?’ You can feel the heat. It’s like a bomb. Nobody around here does it. Basically, our fireworks (display) is an aerial show, and it’s also on the ground.”
The Fireball Festival had its inaugural blast in 2021. Having sat out the 2020 fireworks season due to the pandemic, the powers that be were looking to return with a bang. Nobody knew exactly how big of a bang.
At the end of the annual fireworks display that year, everyone found out when a giant fireball made from a combination of kerosene and gunpowder lit up the sky and singed eyebrows.
As those putting on fireworks displays are wont to do, Ning and Co. immediately were tasked with outdoing themselves. Fireworks displays — and fireballs — are the stuff of one-upsmanship. You’re only as good as your last blasts, and your next ones best be better.
So each year Ning has seen to it that the fireball ante is upped yearly. It has gone from the initial 2021 blast to a couple more the next year and a small handful in 2024.
Ning said the show this year could include as many as a dozen fireballs. Spoiler alert: There will probably be a couple of fireballs at the start, a few more throughout the show, then a handful at the end to accompany, or cap, the finale.
“The finale will have two or three,” Ning said. “In the beginning we’ll have one. It’s a 20-minute show. It will blow people away. You just light up the whole sky. This is all choreographed. Everything is shot up in the air, the sky is lit up and then all of a sudden they hit the fireballs.”
“They” is the Northeast Ohio Pyrotechnic Group, a nonprofit that helps stage Wooster’s fireworks and fireballs. Ning, who has been in charge of Wooster’s July 4 fireworks for more than two decades, sought out the NEOPG a few years ago, looking for a way to make the town’s celebration bigger and better. The fireball was the product of that search.
Now it’s an annual expectation, with Ning admitting bigger and better are requirements. Continuing from past years, the pyrotechnics will be set off in the soccer fields at the corner of Oldman and Burbank roads. This provides a 360-degree viewing area with no obstructions. Fireworks can easily be viewed from the high school parking lot and from Beuhler’s.
A big concern with fireballs always will be safety. That location ensures it is taken care of. It allows for a 600-foot radius, which is required for the size and type of fireworks being used. Ning said due to all precautions being taken and followed, there have been no mishaps over the years.
“No close calls, but we have fireballs that are similar to gasoline explosions on the ground that require a special license to fire,” he said. “Many viewers think it’s a mishap, but it’s all planned.”
The fireworks and fireballs will again be launched July 4, which Ning said is his preference, rather than an adjacent date. He admits to being in a friendly competition with Orrville, which launches its display to coincide with a huge softball tournament hosted in the city. Orrville will launch this year on July 5, which marks the end of the tournament and the town’s weeklong fair.
“Back in the day — and I’ve been doing this for 20-some years — I’d get with Orrville and say, ‘When are you shooting off your fireworks?’” Ning said. “They would say, ‘We don’t know yet.’ We didn’t want to compete with each other. Now we’re going to have ours on July 4, and they can have them when they want.”
The rest of the day is being billed as food, fun and family entertainment, beginning at 5 p.m. and going until the fireworks are over, which should be approximately 10:15 p.m.
Ning said the fireworks for this year cost $22,000, nearly half provided by the Wooster Exchange Club. The rest came from donations from Wooster Rotary, local businesses and community members.
“Due to heightened security concerns, insurance costs have risen,” he said. “Inflation has also resulted in a 5% increase in costs for fireworks themselves. We have been able to negotiate a substantial reduction in costs; however, in order to provide an equivalent display to 2024, the cost of the 2025 celebration will be $25,000.”
Ning said the show will go on, rain or shine.
“Knock on wood, one year I canceled the fireworks out of 20 years,” he said. “It’s up to me. I’ll fire them off out in the rain. One year the people who were setting the fireworks off did not know of a pending storm, and everything got wet. So we fired it the next day.”
