Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Downtown joins New Year’s show

Away from the crowd

There are several vantage points off the Strip that should provide good views of the fireworks show for free. The caveat: Spots away from the crowds and the traffic can be dark and secluded, so take precautions for your safety.

McCarran International Airport parking garage. The top floor offers the best view of the Strip in town, and it's free.

Sunset Road by the airport. There is parking to view the runways off Sunset Road by the main post office, and it, too, provides an unobstructed view of the Strip.

Industrial Road between Russell and Flamingo roads. Long a locals' favorite shortcut around the Strip, Industrial Road is the closest vantage point that's free. It's also the scariest at night. Find parking in one of the many strip mall lots.

Top floor of the downtown city garages. Both the garage at Third Street and Lewis Avenue and the new one at Las Vegas Boulevard and Stewart Avenue should offer a great view of the downtown fireworks and a decent view of the rest, all the way up the Strip. City marshals will patrol for safety, and parking will be free. Also try the Fremont Street Experience garage at Las Vegas Boulevard and Carson Avenue.

Bonneville Avenue and Grand Central Parkway. The city of Las Vegas is recommending these little-traveled roads that border its 61 acres to view the downtown show, but they also should provide a decent view of the fireworks on the north end of the Strip.

Desert Breeze Park, 8425 Spring Mountain Road, at Durango Road. About 6 miles away but a great vantage point and you'll have lots of company. This is a favorite viewing spot of locals who live on the west side of town, so arrive early to get parking. Source: Las Vegas Sun staff

As if it weren't big enough already, Las Vegas' half-million dollar fireworks show grew Monday to 11 launch sites with the addition of the city's $30,000 blast from downtown.

More than 2,500 shells and pyrotechnics will be launched from the city-owned vacant 61 acres just west of downtown next to the Plaza Hotel, officials announced Monday. That means the more than eight-minute show will stretch about 7 miles from the Excalibur on south Strip to downtown.

"It's going to be very cool," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said. "It's going to be like World War Nine out here."

The city was thrown into the fray at the 11th hour after local businessmen John Bielinski and Michael Hyams, executives with the light-show production company Light America, contributed more than $20,000 to the city's $8,000 fireworks budget.

"I wanted to make sure the city of Las Vegas and not just the Strip properties had a great fireworks show this year," Bielinski said.

The city fast-tracked permits and had Pyro Spectaculars add its effort to the coordinated display along the Strip.

The city's portion will be the only ground launch and will be the only portion of the show to use 8-inch shells instead of the 3-inch ones that are required for the rooftop fireworks, Hyams said.

The only hitch could be winds, which are expected to kick up to 15 to 25 mph this afternoon, according to the National Weather Service. Breezes of 20 mph could force the show to cancel, according to Pyro Spectaculars, the fireworks company putting it on.

But federal forecasters also expect winds to died down to a safe 10 to 15 mph tonight. Officials for the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, which helped organize the show, are optimistic.

"It's supposed to die down to between 5 and 10 mph tonight, and that should provide optimal viewing conditions," spokesman Rob Powers said. "A little wind blows the smoke away, so that views are not obscured."

Three generations of Souzas are in Las Vegas to work on "America's party," as it has been dubbed.

Jim Souza, president of Pyro Spectaculars, and 80 relatives and employees worked feverishly Monday to prepare the fireworks show that is expected to light up the Las Vegas Valley from the south end of the Strip to downtown.

Many of those working on the show -- the technical term is pyrotechnician -- will not even see the display. Instead, they will be closely monitoring the electronics that actually fire the shells -- a process that can be complicated because they are timed to work with a musical program.

The Souza team has fire-control teams at 11 locations and a central command post at the Rio.

"The logistics makes this extremely challenging," Souza said Monday on the rooftop of the Excalibur, one of the sites serving as a platform for the fireworks display. At least five members of the Souza team will be at each site.

The command center is critical to keep everything on time and coordinated, Souza said.

"We might as well be in 11 different cities," he said.

The company, based in Rialto, Calif., has so far sunk about $750,000 into the project, Souza said, well above the $500,000 paycheck the company will receive from Las Vegas Events, the sponsor of the show. Souza said the effort is worthwhile as a showcase for his company.

"We want to show what we can do," he said. "It's a showcase for us and our product line."

Fireworks aficionados should see new effects, including "zig-zag" and "Souza" comets, so named because the shells will make "Z" or "S" curves through the sky.

"There's a lot of action, a lot of variety," Souza said.

Leslie Kim, 26, was one of the company employees carefully wiring up the multitude of shells on the Excalibur's roof.

"It's a lot of work, a lot of hard labor," Kim said. But as with the Souzas, it is work that she knows well from a lifetime of experience.

"I grew up in fireworks," she said.

A few feet away her father was doing similar work. Ui Yung Kim, who moved to the U.S. from Korea in 1974, is the lead man for the company at the Excalibur site.

This show has everybody at Pyro Spectaculars a little stressed, Leslie Kim said, because unlike a traditional Fourth of July show, this one has to start and end exactly on time.

"New Year's has it built in," she said. "Everybody's waiting, everybody's tense and anxious."

Metro Police have said that the entire force is working tonight. In addition to the officers among the more than 280,000 people expected to crowd the streets of the Strip and downtown, more than two dozen Metro and Clark County Corrections Officers will guard the rooftops and the open field downtown where the fireworks are scheduled to go off.

"We do have detectives and armed corrections officers assigned to the fireworks with 24-hour security," said Michelle Smaistrla, Metro special investigations detective. "We want to make sure that nobody has access to the fireworks who shouldn't."

The local police presence has been beefed up with federal agents, including the FBI, Smaistrla said.

Souza said the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, the Transportation Department and the Clark County and Las Vegas fire departments also are involved in providing security for the show.

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