Up in Smoke

I thought the dude might be high from fireworks fumes because fireworks leave huge amounts of toxic smoke. That smoke, I correctly figured, would fallout on the folks unfortunate enough to be on the pier during the show. Kubani also didn’t take into account all the plastic crap that would fall from the fireworks into the ocean impacting marine life.

Kubani’s next statement made me sit up straight and make a mental note to make sure that Denise Anne and I were well upwind of the smoke. (Unfortunately, it turned out that we weren’t able to avoid it, especially as we navigated our way through the Third Street Promenade that was so covered in smoke, it was hard to see very far.)

“Based on the fact that fireworks are being launched daily around the world and thousands of times a year, we’re not really seeing any acute impacts,” Kubani told the Press. “This isn’t going to create any more significant problems than just a regular fireworks show we have on the Fourth of July.”

What does that mean? What it means is the city of Santa Monica added it up and when it came to blowing $120,000, it wouldn’t matter if the citizenry got a little hammered by heavy metals and perchlorate, a toxin that plagues the state’s water supply and effects the thyroid which is especially dangerous to children.

“Look, they’ve started!” Denise Anne said, face turned skyward and illuminated by a pyrotechnic burst. “Wow, they’re shooting them kind of low.”

For some reason, the thousands of explosions, blasts, flames and sparks weren’t shot to what normally seems full elevation. Perhaps the pyrotechnicians wanted to make sure that if there was a marine layer, the bursts would be underneath them. Whatever the reason, thousands of shells and thousands of dollars of fireworks were soon ensconced in their own impenetrable cloud of smoke.

It was more fun watching the huge billowing clouds of toxic mist descend on the multitudes. But even that ironic amusement slowly turned to toxic trepidation as we saw the immense fogbank of fumes spread out over Santa Monica’s bluffs, blocking our way back.

“This sucks, Mike,” Denise Anne said slipping back into her Dawn Wilde persona as we made our way through my hometown now gone up in smoke. “If it were AC/DC I might not mind getting poisoned, but that show flat out stunk.”

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