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The truck was still parked outside the fire station on the evening of July 2, its lights on, and Fire Chief Jason Gilliland was still sitting in it. The town was deep into festival week, the heat holding past dark, and the Fourth of July fireworks depended on a long list of things few people watching from shore would notice.
Asked what the stretch is like for the Fire Department, Gilliland did not dress it up.
"24/7 with no days off," he told the Marblehead Independent on Friday afternoon.
The busy days before the Fourth of July have been busy but not alarming — a couple of lift assists, a few medical calls, three carbon monoxide calls when the power went out and the usual odds and ends. No heat emergency, he said, beyond the usual summer runs.
The heat did help take down the power. On the afternoon of July 2, a section of primary conductor feeding the Lafayette and Humphrey circuits overheated and failed, according to Jonathan Blair, general manager of the Marblehead Municipal Light Department. Roughly 1,000 customers lost power around 4 p.m., and about 1,500 feet of overhead cable had to be rebuilt. Blair said the heat was a contributing factor but not the only cause.
The outage is what filled the cooling shelter at Brown School, which the town had set up on earlier occasions with no one showing. This time people came, to cots, water and deliberately no food.
"Everybody, whether they needed to be cooled or not, would come for a free meal," Gilliland said.
It peaked at 21 people, and the last one left around 3 a.m. Gilliland said it was the first time in three years anyone had actually used it. The department also ran a cool-down with the ladder truck at the Community Center.
The weather call
The fireworks were another matter, and by July 3 they came down to the sky. Gilliland was watching a forecast that called for possible thunderstorms around 5 p.m., a clearing, then another round near 9 p.m. The town would take a final read before deciding.
He had been in touch with the shooter, who has run the Marblehead display for years. The question, Gilliland said, was not whether it rained during the show but whether the crew could get the fireworks loaded and covered before any weather came through. Once the tubes are loaded and the plastic is over them, the rest is manageable.
"We could fire them in a monsoon," he said, meaning the crew technically could, not that anybody wanted to.
The trouble is visibility: through heavy rain and low cloud, the show turns into ambient light.
"It won't be a good show, because you won't see anything," he said.
Gilliland has been fire chief for 18 years, with time as a firefighter before that, and he is blunt about one limit: the show cannot just be made bigger, even in the country's 250th-anniversary year. The harbor safety perimeter and Coast Guard rules decide what can be fired from that spot.
"The law is the law," he said.
The fireworks company applies for the permit, and Gilliland reviews and approves it before it goes to the state fire marshal. Planning starts in the spring, then picks up in the last week.
The recent years went sideways, each for a different reason, and Gilliland does not take a clean show for granted. In 2023, fog swallowed the display and most people saw only a dull glow. In 2024, the fireworks and the Harbor Illumination were called off after a barge fire around 1:30 a.m. on July 4; Gilliland has said Marblehead's fireworks had not been loaded and the fire looked accidental, tied to hot material from another town's show. In 2025, the display came back clean.
The machinery
Behind the one night sits a planning group that meets year-round, and every two weeks in the final stretch: Town Administrator Thatcher Kezer, Fireworks Committee Chair Alexander Falk, Department of Public Works Superintendent Amy McHugh, Park and Rec Director Jamie Bloch, Public Health Director Andrew Petty, Harbormaster Mark Souza, Police Chief Dennis King and Gilliland. Parks and recreation pulls the metal trash barrels around the harbor and puts out cardboard ones instead, with the national threat level still elevated. Public works sets the barriers; police handle security and the details; and fire covers the pyrotechnics, ambulance coverage and public safety placement.
Gilliland brings in an extra ambulance and a Gator-type vehicle, the only thing that can get between Fort Sewall and the Boston Yacht Club when bigger trucks can't. Firefighters are posted to the public safety boat and out with the harbormaster. Souza's worst spot is Brown Island — boat traffic, low tide and underage drinking, all in one place — though this year The Trustees of Reservations, which owns the island, was expected to send rangers.
The day starts early. Around 8 a.m., a box truck arrives on Commercial Street, and technicians offload the fireworks onto Damon Pignato's boat, which runs them out to the barge — in overnight after another North Shore show. The crew spends the morning and afternoon loading and wiring. Around 3 p.m., Gilliland heads out with another fire official to walk the barge, the last real gate before dark.
Ring of fire
The last piece is up to the residents. For the Harbor Illumination, the town hands out about 1,500 flares to households around the harbor, spaced roughly 10 to 15 feet apart by where people live. A letter tells them to come collect their share.
Pickup had gone well this year, Gilliland said, with only three boxes left, 35 flares to a box. That has not always been the case.
"A little less than half the flares were left, which is crazy, because you can see the gap," he said of a leaner year.
This year the stretches were spoken for. Brian Rucco was set to cover from the Adams House up to Fort Sewall, and Bob Butler the causeway. Fire staff would handle Crocker Park and other public areas in the Gator. Gilliland runs it all off a punch list, and after 18 years, he has no illusions: "You always miss something," he said.
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