Video: San Diego fireworks accidentally went off all at once

San Diego's big fireworks display suffered a technical glitch causing all of the pyrotechnics to go off all at once. Ooops. From ABC News:

Garden State Fireworks, the firm hired by the city to produce the show, acknowledged the mistake. “We will be working throughout the night to determine what technical problem caused the entire show to be launched in about 15 seconds. We apologize for the brevity of the show and the technical difficulties…."

"San Diego Fireworks Show Goes Up in Flames" (Thanks for the video link, chaopoiesis!)

David Pescovitz is Boing Boing's co-editor/managing partner. He's also a research director at Institute for the Future. On Instagram, he's @pesco.

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http://www.xeni.net/ Xeni Jardin

It happens to a lot of cities. San Diego shouldn’t feel ashamed. There are drugs that can help with this issue.
- jahxman
  
  Aw, you always know the right thing to say….
- http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm
  
  San Diego: “I can’t believe it. This has never happened before.”
- autark
  
  It’s called Premature Fulmination
- Paul Renault
  
  Last year, in beautiful Oban.
  
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-15611160
http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux

Surprisingly not much fun to watch – too much glare.
- Iron Clad Burrito
  
  The camera doesn’t really do it justice. As brief as it was, it was pretty awesome to watch. :)
http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

Steve Merchant on fireworks (XFM days with RG and KP): ”I always thought, ‘if the guy organising it had wheeled out an ENORMOUS firework, climbed in, gone ‘last one to the moon’s a bender!’ then shot off, that I would have been, ‘yeah!”’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NC0342–G4s
- AdrenalineSleep
  
  Came here to post this. You, sir, are a ruiner. :P
  - http://twitter.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman
    
    Sorry! I will let you have dibs on it next time it’s appropriate to use it, however.
http://twitter.com/nagmay Gabriel Nagmay

There seem to be three displays (1 in foreground, 2 in background). Did they all go off at once?
- chaopoiesis
  
  Multiple launch sites around San Diego Bay. Which implies some sort of synchronized remote launch system. Which in turn implies the potential for a hack. One wonders…
  
  BTW here’s a far better video of it:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ifn8LJl5n0
  - morcheeba
    
    Nah, it would be much easier to use synchronized clocks than some sort of data link.
    - chaopoiesis
      
      … then for all the clocks to fail identically, the same setup error by the same tech crew. Plausible.
      - nathanroberts
        
        That actually sounds fairly similar to the (supposed) origin of Murphy’s Law. An experiment involving a series of force sensors returned no data; as it turns out, every single sensor had been systematically wired backwards.
  - http://ae4rv.com/ royaltrux
    
    That is a much better video, thanks.
  - David Pescovitz
    
    Thanks! I updated the post with this better video!
  - Dolphin Bunnywolf
    
    So could the programmable controls powering the firing system be vulnerable to, say, a Stuxnet variant?
    - Dolphin Bunnywolf
      
      Or maybe they hired Beavis and Butthead to run their fireworks shows?
      
      Damn, I miss the little weinerheads.
    - chaopoiesis
      
      A recent article in the U-T San Diego quotes the owner of the fireworks company as claiming the problem was caused by a “rogue signal” sent by “a virus” in their computerized launch software. You can’t make this stuff up…
technobach

I personally think that all fireworks shows should be like this.
Marcus Mendes

This is why I ALWAYS read before pressing “Yes to all”
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

It reminds me of the end of “Quatermass and the Pit”. The scene in question scared the crap out of me when I was young and impressionable, because, well, huge glowing things in the sky are scary, that’s all there is to it.
MrHarley

Stay classy San Diego! This I like, however electing birther guy to judge, now that’s a technical glitch.

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/jun/19/gary-kreep-clinches-win-for-judge/
Nadreck

You’re supposed to hook the fuses up in *series* NOT *parallel*, dammit!
- Sagodjur
  
  Completely off topic – I can’t find anything online about the hard-boiled story you referenced in a post nine months ago called The Deader They Die. You mind telling me who wrote it?
http://www.twitter.com/eselqueso eselqueso

Who has time for a whole 15 minute show anymore, anyway? This should be fireworks protocol from now on!
oldtaku

I bet someone programmed all the delays in seconds when it needed to be hundredths of seconds or milliseconds (you enter what you think is 5 seconds to the next shell, but you just specified .05 seconds). There’s no way it was a physical problem with it happening on all three barges.
- rekoil
  
  That theory makes a lot of sense, since it’s apparent from the video that there *was* some sort of sequencing going on (you can see charges firing sequentially), just at an extremely high fire rate.
teapot

Nothing says ‘merica like a BIG FUCKING EXPLOSION! I can not think of a more fitting way to celebrate US independence day.
http://www.disoriented.net/ angusm

I guess next year they won’t ask Michael Bay to organize the fireworks display.
sqyntz

contrary to the title, they did *not* all go off at once!
- Aeron
  
  Seriously, all at once would have meant three large holes in San Diego.
  - rekoil
    
    They launched sequentially but at an incredibly rapid rate (see oldtaku’s comment above). But they all launched as designed and exploded in the air, not on the platforms.
RSDeuce

We weren’t close, and got to watch another fireworks show (at Fiesta Island) that went off without a hitch. However, we could see all three locations and even from several miles that crap was LOUD. Pretty amazing at a distance.
Atvaark

So, Mythbusters, what did it prove?
oldtaku

Found one even dumber – the town’s fireworks set off by a stray bullet: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/07/05/premature_detonation/
http://twitter.com/peterswimm Peter Swimm

I hope they had a grindcore band playing the hits.
- William Farrar
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dws87NR6DpM
semiotix

We apologize for the brevity of the show and the technical difficulties

PR fail. Here’s what you say.

“You are welcome for the off-the-charts awesomeness of the show, which no other fireworks company would even dare to attempt.”
ackpht

They should consult with my lovely neighbors, who had no difficulty stretching out their pyrotechnic and acoustic displays over the entire day. Maybe the guys in San Diego were too sober.
Aeron

This was a really good sales pitch for whomever designed the launchers, huh? One hiccup and something terrible would have happened.
ponzicar

That’s not a glitch. That’s an improvement. It’s a lot more spectacular than watching them go off one at a time over a much larger period of time.
Gemma

Scotland was there before you! The same thing happened in Oban on bonfire night last year (November 2011).

Video and news story.
Paul Renault

It looks the aftermath of finally defeating the last Boss on Diablo III.

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2012/07/blizzard-admits-diablo-iii-is-a-game-that-ends/
- Michael Stratford
  
  Finally? As though that took longer than 1 try, few hours of your time?
  - Paul Renault
    
    You have to include all the time spent on Diablo and Diablo II.
    
    (Actually, after fifteen or twenty levels of Diablo, I stopped playing it. I’ve never understood the attraction.)
Manny

That was frickin’ AWESOME!
lasermike026

I like it! Fireworks for the twitter generation!
http://www.markcrummett.com crummett

The plaintive beeping is kind of poignant. Poor computer. “Uh, excuse me. We seem to have some sort of problem here!”
- nathanroberts
  
  I thought that was just a stray car alarm. (Set off by the vibrations of an entire barge of fireworks going off all at once no doubt)
  - jackie31337
    
    That was my impression, too.
Daneel

Something like this happened at a Guy Fawkes Night display I went to once. Caused by one firework exploding on the ground and setting all the others off, some were blown over and went off at strange angles. Think a few people were nastily injured.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/northamptonshire/4411776.stm

I wonder if Kettering has ever been likened to San Diego before? Anyone else here ever been to both?
http://twitter.com/WikiTruths Wiki-Truths

http://www.scarybear.org/index.php?comicID=80
http://twitter.com/wilmcdaniel wilmcdaniel

I like sparklers using proximity to create BIG.
Mike Fayer

That’s not a bug that’s a feature.
- xiangreek
  
  I had that as my signature until my manager told me to cut the shit.
Subdrill

I’ve had a bit of pyro experience, and with the disclaimer that this is speculation, it’s likely a rather unforgiving feature caused by user error. They were probably using FireOne choreography software and hardware, a really expensive, but very simple and easily scalable system for designing and performing pyro shows. Once you’ve built a database of all your products, you can drag and drop any shell or effect to burst at time “x” to line up with the music, and the software will automatically initiate the effect at time “x-y”, where “y” is the time that effect takes to go from launch until the actual burst. Once you’ve programmed the show, you can easily print out lists of where to hook up every single piece of product, from 1 to whatever; the loaders don’t have to deal with the timings of anything, and come performance time, the operator only has to hit the start button and the show runs automatically along a perfectly-synced timeline.
Here’s the trouble though: when checking for continuity and connection right before the show, you can move that curser anywhere along the timeline to check when and where and how everything’s going to fire, and you can start and stop anywhere during the program’s timeline without resetting to the beginning every time. If after the continuity check, you don’t reset to the beginning, and you’re now live and ready to fire the real thing and hit start, the curser doesn’t just stop or reset to the beginning, it attempts to play from that spot. And then fires all product that is set to fire from that delay -or earlier-. The software effectively says “now’s the time to fire everything whose delay is less than time “x-y”, and for a time “x” at the end of the show, that’s everything. The operator hits start, the software sends the “fire everything” signal, and you get this. It’s happened a couple times before, it’s a terrible bug I’m surprised hasn’t been fixed, and the lead operator was almost definitely fired for this, that was probably at least $100,000 worth of product shot in 9 seconds.
- oldtaku
  
  They’re saying $400K with all three barges!
BarBarSeven

Fail? AGAIN! AGAIN!
penguinchris

I’m not sure how common these are, but at my local fireworks show they had some that directed all their energy not toward glowing burning stuff, but solely toward making the loudest bang possible. They were awesome… you could see them shooting up and then instead of the typical big explosion, it was just an enormous boom. The sound is my favorite part of fireworks shows and this one in San Diego must have been unbelievably great.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  You should come to Palm Springs for the fireworks, then. The mountain reflects the sound quite dramatically.
  - penguinchris
    
    I can stay at your place, right? :) Boing Boing party in the desert!
xiangreek

Boss: ”Hey Frank, this field’s value is in milliseconds, not seconds…”

Frank: “Oh shi…”