Huge New Year’s fireworks display planned on Strip

Monday, Nov. 17, 2003 | 10:34 a.m.

Promoters of Las Vegas' upcoming New Year's Eve activities say their $500,000-plus Strip fireworks show will be perhaps the largest pyrotechnics display in the nation.

"We do most of the major shows, and I can't think of one that will be larger than the New Year's Eve Strip show," said Jim Souza, president of Pyro Spectaculars of Rialto, Calif.

"Our company does the shows in Seattle, San Francisco and Philadelphia, and those shows range in cost from $100,000 to $250,000," Souza said. "Our 11-minute show at 10 hotels on the Strip from the Stratosphere to the Excalibur will be one of the most spectacular ever."

At the beginning of this year, Souza's company did an 8-minute local fireworks show that cost about $500,000.

Crowds equal to or greater than last year's 285,000 Strip revelers are expected for next month's New Year's party, event organizers say.

Souza and local officials will formally unveil the plans for the upcoming party with an 11:30 a.m. news conference Wednesday outside the Thomas & Mack Center at 4505 Maryland Parkway. It will include the test-firing of pyrotechnic devices similar to the ones that will be used on New Year's Eve.

This will be the fourth year that Las Vegas Events coordinates the show, which is funded by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. As has been the case since the millennium Strip celebration, security will be "the No. 1 concern" at the New Year's party, Las Vegas Events' Mary Anne Beaman said.

While specific details about numbers of police and fire personnel were not immediately available, Beaman, who coordinates public safety efforts with the various entities, said the security presence will be visible and significant.

"There are no indications that we will do anything different than in any other year," she said. "Metro Police will be everywhere from the ground to the rooftops and will coordinate with hotel security. Every available police officer and firefighter will be on duty."

Clark County Fire Department spokesman Bob Leinbach said that since the millennium celebration and the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, New Year's Eves "have been real busy nights for us."

In addition to fire prevention and fire fighting duties and inspection procedures for the show, fire department paramedics are out in force.

"We will have teams of paramedics in and out of crowds and at stations along the way to help people," Leinbach said. "We realize the hotels want to do more each year so we have to address that issue and make things as safe as possible for everyone."

The Metro Police public information office said police have just begun gearing up for Strip patrols on New Years and have no definitive numbers of on-duty personnel to release.

Final details on security plans for New Year's Eve are slated to be announced at a Dec. 23 meeting with local news media, Metro police said.

"This year we will try to do something a little more exciting to engage the crowd in a surround-sound effect before the big display," Souza said. "We want people to enjoy the new patterns and feel the fireworks."

This year's eight-minute and 30 second main show will be preceded by a three-minute warm-up show featuring the firing of shells off the Strip hotels that are participating in the event.

"We will be building up the anticipation," Souza said. "the aerial shows from each building will be followed by a salvo of titanium salutes in the minute leading up to the 10-second countdown.

"For each of the 10 seconds, we will send up a silver fountain with the fireworks display following at the stroke of midnight."

The highlight of the show will be four Souza Bombardos, with each featuring 100 different firings of zig-zagging pyrotechnic displays across the skies.

Last year, the blue Souza Bombardo made its debut at the Las Vegas New Year's show. This year, Souza said, there will be blue, silver, gold and pastel Souza Bombardos, with the pastels featuring new lime, lemon and peach blasts.

"We have been working on this display for a couple of years," Souza said.

The test on Wednesday, Souza said, will give the news media -- and thus the public -- a chance to look behind the scenes of a fireworks display, by seeing the crews operate computers used to control the blasts.

"Many people look up in the sky and think this happens magically, but really it takes a lot of time to put a display together," Souza said. "We travel the world looking for new and exciting effects and we do a lot of testing throughout the year."

His company has been selected to do the special effects and fireworks for the August opening and closing ceremonies of the Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.

Souza said Wednesday's media event in Las Vegas also will feature the firing of fountain pyrotechnics similar to the 10-second countdown for the New Year's event. He said sprays will fly 25-feet.

"This is more than a job to me -- I see myself as an entertainer who provides a lot of excitement," Souza said. "I'll be on the roof of the Rio New Year's Eve and when I hear a half-million people cheer that will be my reward."

The fireworks display won't be the only show in Las Vegas on New Year's, of course.

Major hotels are bringing in headliners that range from rock groups for the young T-shirt and jeans crowd to seasoned entertainers for the older sequined gown and tuxedo party-goers.

Styx and REO Speedwagon are slated for the Aladdin Theatre, Metallica is booked for The Joint at the Hard Rock, The Goo Goo Dolls are on tap at Mandalay Bay's House of Blues and The Strokes will perform at the University of Nevada Las Vegas' Cox Pavilion.

On the other end of the spectrum, The New Year's Eve Ball with Debbie Reynolds is scheduled for the Orleans Arena, Wayne Newton will perform at the Stardust's Wayne Newton Theatre and Connie Stevens is booked for the Suncoast Showroom.

Las Vegas hotels in the days before and after New Year's Eve generally are at 93 to 95 percent capacity, increasing to a 98 percent occupancy on New Year's Eve night, meaning a vacant room is virtually impossible to find.

New Year's Eve room rates on the Strip generally range from $175 at the Travelodge to more than $1,000 for a Bellagio suite.

Beaman said that while parking and bathrooms are not always easy to find, event officials try to make accommodations as comfortable as possible given such a mass of humanity in such a small space.

"A good part of our budget goes toward port-a-potties and that is always a challenge because we figure it based on a crowd estimate and a projection of how many people would use a unit during the evening," Beaman said.

As for prior years' complaints about a lack of parking, Beaman said Las Vegans can take free CAT public buses to the Strip, although Las Vegas Boulevard will be shut down when people start gathering in the streets.

She said some locals might want to avoid the Strip and get a better view the fireworks at other locations such as Interstate-215 and Decatur Boulevard.

Although New Year's crowds in recent years have been huge, serious incidents have been few in number and revelers have been mostly well-behaved, officials said.

There was a tourist death during the millennium celebration though. Shortly after midnight on Jan. 1, 2000, Todd Surmon, 26, of Menlo Park Calif., fell off a light pole he had climbed in front of the Paris hotel-casino.

Since then, security and public safety efforts have remained beefed up.

On Dec. 31, 2001, amid fears from the recent Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, a pair of two-man Clark County special response teams were stationed near the Strip to test for biological and radiological materials. No such chemicals turned up.

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