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Colorado lake closed briefly as crews cleaned up debris after fireworks display goes awry

The lake was closed late Saturday night and early Sunday morning as crews cleaned up after a mishap at the annual holiday fireworks display. The state park wanted to make sure that the area was safe before reopening.
Ella Piret/Courtesy photo

Steamboat Lake State Park manager Julie Arington said debris was cleaned up and the lake was reopened Sunday morning following the holiday fireworks display mishap Saturday night.

“Most people aren’t super active that early, so we were closed from like around 8 p.m. to 10 a.m.,” Arington said. “We had a couple of people that were hoping to get out on the water that weren’t too excited about (the closure), but they were understanding and it was OK. We were able to open quickly and get people out on water as soon as possible.”

Shortly after the first few fireworks exploded high above the lake, spectators noticed several large explosions on the island where the display was staged. They watched as fireworks seemed to fire in all directions, exploding just above the water, while others exploded on or just above the launch site.



“I’m certainly not an expert in fireworks, but talking to the technicians, and they also don’t know exactly what happened, it seems like one of the fireworks or one of the tubes that contains it, malfunctioned,” Arington said. “Once it set off, it damaged some other equipment, and some of the other fireworks.”

Arington said three technicians on the island suffered minor injuries, but none of the state park staff was injured, and public safety was never compromised.

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“Our staff picked them up from the island and moved them over to the marina and North Routt Fire Protection District EMTs came down to check them out,” Arington said. “We kind of left the island alone that night because we knew there was potential for fire or unexploded things, and we didn’t want to put anybody at risk to try to go back out there at night to try to evaluate it, or do anything with it. We left it for that night until the next morning.”

Arrington said the island has long been used as a launch site, and believes that reduced the impact from the incident.

“One of the main reasons why we like to have it there is because the danger is extremely low,” Arington said. “The fireworks are not going to be big enough to affect anything on the shoreline, and we have (forest) ranger staff on the lake that keep all the spectators on boats far enough away from the island as well, so they’re not going to be impacted.”

The event is funded by a nonprofit, Friends of Steamboat Lake, who collect donations for the show — and they also arranged for Zambelli Fireworks to produce this year’s display. Zambelli Fireworks is based in Pennsylvania and does shows across the country. Arington doesn’t expect this one incident to impact the future of the event.

“We’ve done it almost every year since I’ve been here,” said Arington, who can only remember the event being canceled one time in the 17 years since she arrived. “Obviously this has been a long-standing, traditional community event. I think it has a lot of support from the public, and I think this one incident doesn’t necessarily mean that we should stop doing the show. It’s not necessarily a demonstration that there’s something wrong with providing the show.”

This story is from SteamboatPilot.com


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