City releases final thoughts on its Great American Barbecue

The Fourth of July is long past, but there is still time to reflect on the city’s annual Great American Barbecue.

This year’s rendition of the annual event that celebrates the nation’s independence was a success in terms of attendance and fun, city officials reported Monday.

The city estimates that more than 7,000 people attended the celebration and almost 5,000 watched the aerial display from their homes.

To transport these residents’ shuttles from each of the six park-n-ride locations shuttled residents non-stop from 5:30 p.m. until well after 11:30 p.m., to ensure no one had difficulty arriving at or leaving the event.

Throughout the night the city kept residents entertained with a slew of events including water slides, a wiffle ball tournament, pie-eating contest, watermelon seed-spitting contest and the opportunity to submerge Maricopa Mayor Anthony Smith in a dunk tank.

As the night wound down residents were treated to a showing of the 1990s hit movie “The Sand Lot.”

It is after this movie that things stopped going smoothly.

The fireworks show was supposed to start at 9:30 p.m., but Mother Nature would not let that happen.

“Shortly after 8:30 (p.m.), we became aware of two weather systems moving toward Maricopa that contained gusty winds in the 50 mph range and intense lightening,” said Marty McDonald, director of Community Services for the city.

City officials conferred with the fire department about possible safety concerns that could arise from lighting the display in the gusty conditions and decided to reposition responder units and delay the show 15 minutes.

“Public safety is our number one concern,” McDonald said.

Besides the time delay, the weather also had an impact on the presentation of the fireworks display.

The show was originally scheduled to last 30-minutes and all of the fireworks were rigged to be electronically ignited.

However, when fireworks are launched they leave a trail of smoke, which acts as a conductor for lightning so the electronic ignition of the show had to be disarmed, and the fireworks had to be launched manually.

It was this that led to the show being drawn out and not as spectacular as the city had planned, McDonald explained.

“The show was not up to our standards or the standards of the contractor. All fireworks productions are subject to the prevailing conditions at the time of the launch and we promise to bring back a bigger and better show for Founders Day in October,” McDonald said.

Photo by Jake Johnson