The big Donatos Downtown Freedom Blast fireworks show will light up downtown Indianapolis Friday night.
It takes about five days to prepare for the 24-minute show. Crews were busy high above the city Thursday to get all the pyrotechnics ready to go.
Dave Moore and his family -- with Zambelli Fireworks Incorporated out of Fort Wayne -- painstakingly brought all of the pyrotechnics up 37 floors to the roof of the Regions Tower. They brought up about 400 racks, weighing about 50 pounds each.
"We've got a 24-foot box truck, actually two-and-a-half trucks of stuff that we've got to carry up here. The elevator doesn't come to the roof. We've got to carry it up five flights of stairs. And that's a lot of hard work," Moore said.
Once up on the roof, the hundreds of shells were wired to electronic boards and then connected to a firing board that will set them all off one by one -- perfectly synced to music.
"As you can see, each one of these is numbered so there's a specific shot that goes for each part of the script," said Brian Liffick with Zambelli Fireworks Incorporated.
That script makes for a spectacular performance and the applause on the ground is appreciated 500 feet up.
"It's awesome to hear the crowd when it's over with. That gets the adrenaline pumping so that we can carry all this stuff back down," Moore said.
"We tear it all town in one night, so we're here until about 2 in the morning," Liffick said. "It's probably my favorite holiday. I get to take off a week of work. I'm an accountant normally and then I come down here and do this. So definitely a different aspect for me. But I love doing it. It's a lot of fun."
The fireworks launch at 10 p.m. Friday. The one-block area around Regions Tower will close at 9:30 p.m.
The simulcast soundtrack can be heard on 93.1 WIBC, 97.1 HANK FM, FM 107.5/1070 The Fan or B105.7.
For more local fireworks, check out the list of 2014 Central Indiana Fireworks.
