Firefighters from all over the state converged in Long Beach this week for three days of comprehensive training on how to play with fire.
Generally, firefighters fight fires, as the title might suggest. But on Thursday, rather than treat fire like their age-old nemesis, they reveled in the many spectacular incarnations of the feared element.
When mothers or fathers punish their kids for playing with matches, this is the sort of thing they’re trying to forestall—the specter of their children growing up and escalating their fascination with flames until they turn the world into a crimson hellscape of heat and smoke.
Thursday was the final day of “study” at the Long Beach Convention Center, much of which consisted of Powerpoint presentations and book-larnin’, rewarding the students with an unbridled, though somewhat disappointingly safe, explosive orgy of pyrotechnics and other good ways to lose a hand, keying mainly on the flammable effects used in filmmaking and celebrations, all led by fireworks guru Eric Elias, who has arranged and led pyrotechnical extravaganzas at the Hollywood Bowl for 40 years without ever once losing a bassoonist.