LAKE MURRAY SHORES, S.C. — Preparations to put on an explosive fireworks show for the 4th of July weekend on Lake Murray are underway. Thousands in a sea of red, white and blue are about to be the view in just a few days.
The goal of the Capital City Lake Murray Country Regional Tourism Board is to bring in the tourists for the weekend.
"To have a fabulous July 4th celebration for the residents, but also to bring tourists here, to make this event a visitor, tourist destination," Jayne Baker, Tourism board spokesperson said.
Brent Munnerlyn, the firework mastermind behind the show says it takes some pow to put on the largest fireworks show in the Carolinas and Georgia.
It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 600-700 labor hours that goes into Lake Murray. On top of the amount of labor you've got usually somewhere around ten people on each island in terms of setup crew, back-in crews, haul-in crews, preparation crews," Brent Munnerlyn, owner of Munnerlyn Pyrotechnics said.
This involves also making the show water-proof like in cases similar to this year where wet weather is possible.
"The shoot racks are all covered with six mil plastic, so it's a thick plastic covering that goes over all the racks. So what we do is we just take off sections of the plastic at a time. So Lake Murray's got hundreds of racks on it, so we may take a section of 20 racks, we may remove the plastic off 20 racks. We'll work and coordinate and get the shells dropped in that area and then we'll recover it," Munnerlyn said.
Leave it to the experts to bring the boom.
"After 34 years we certainly have it down to a science," Baker said.
The two locations for the show at Spence Island and Dreher Island State Park are there to prevent boat overcrowding and to make travel time to the center of the lake convenient.
This $100,000 show is about to be some kind of spectacular. You better not miss it.