PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — It's a busy time for fireworks crews as they get ready for two New Year's Eve shows over Penn's Landing.
Crews were in the middle of a four-day process Friday, loading hundreds of shells into mortar tubes on a barge docked at the Navy Yard and wiring the shells to control modules.
"Each shell is individually numbered, so they all have to be broken down by style and numbered up," said technician Kevin Stead of the firm Pyrotecnico.
"We start breaking out the shells, loading them up and wiring them up to the modules themselves," he explained. "Once we're done all that we'll have to keep all the modules together, run a continuity test, and get all things ready for the show."
The shells are choreographed to music for both the 6 p.m. "Let the Games Begin" show, and the midnight presentation, which has a "Have a Philly New Year" theme.
The 14-minute pyrotechnics will feature some newer fireworks that change color, as well as old favorites, Stead said.
When you look up into the sky on New Year’s Eve you can expect to see peonies, which “is just kind of like a round ball when it breaks,” palms that look like palm trees, and willows that rain down, Stead explained.
"The last couple of years they've been coming out and getting more popular, the color-changing and waves. The colors change across the ball of the shell as it burns."
The barge heads upriver mid-afternoon on New Year's Eve for the two Penn's Landing shows. You can hear the soundtrack for each on KYW Newsradio 103.9 FM and 1060 AM.