America Celebrates Fourth of July

July 4 -- New Yorkers may be hard to impress, but when 150 tons of explosives light up the night sky, it’s hard to stay home.

Hundreds of thousands of people turned out to watch the rockets’ red-white-and-blue pop from 13 barges in New York Harbor, capping off OpSail’s parade of tall ships and naval vessels. Each barge represents one of the original colonies, organizers said.

Macy’s Fireworks 2000 was “ the largest it has everbeen,” said Jean McFaddin, producer and director of theextravaganza—60,024 shells shooting into the air from fourlocations in the city’s waterways, three times more than last year. “This is the biggest fireworks show in the world, ever.”

A Show for the Gods

McFaddin was in charge of the computer-fired bursts, from acommand site at the midtown Water Club on the East River. A dozenworkers staffed telephones, video screens and walkie-talkies there this afternoon.

Accompanying the pyrotechnics was a soundtrack including Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” patriotic standards like “Stars and Stripes Forever” and awhimsical section that includes the noises of whistles, birds andbees.

The show ended in a fiery tribute to the Statue of Liberty from two barges in the Verrazano Narrows between Staten Island and Brooklyn and another barge by the statue delivering a final, six-minute salute.

Computers earlier today stood ready to beam instructions signals through theair to automatically trigger the fireworks at each barge, but McFaddin said there were also four manual backup systems for emergencies.

Because the show was staged from so many different locations, no one on the ground could see all the pyrotechnics.

“The person who will see best is God,” McFaddin said. “Only the heavens will see the whole show.”

Jostling for a Spot

Elsewhere around the nation and around the world, Americans celebrated their independence with less hubris but just as much gusto.