Plans for 2020 4th of July celebration discussed in community meeting

The Wrangell Chamber of Commerce and other city officials hosted a public meeting to discuss the upcoming 2020 Fourth of July celebration. Wrangell is well known for going all out with its week-long schedule of events for the Fourth, and a preliminary draft schedule shows that this will be the same this year. While there was low turnout for the meeting, there was a lot of information regarding some of the celebration's bigger events.

For one thing, the annual boat races will feature a brand new category this year. John Waddington said that they will be introducing "Sport C Powerboat" races this year. The category will be an exciting new addition to the other races, he said, and will also be a good way to get younger boaters into the races. While other races can sometimes be pre-determined by who enters a category with the most horsepower, he said, this race will have contestants enter with essentially the same type of craft, a 12-foot-long tunnel boat. This race will go to whoever is the better behind the wheel of the craft, not to whoever has the biggest engine.

"There are blueprints for the boat down at the chamber of commerce, they also have a copy of them at the high school," Waddington said. "I think the supply list for them is less than $1,000. You can look them up online, as well, and watch them as they race. It's the Dillon Class C Sport Tunnel."

Another of the highly anticipated events during Wrangell's Fourth celebration is the fireworks show. Last year's fireworks were cancelled due to drought conditions, as well as the city facing a water shortage. Wrangell residents may remember there was some controversy over plans to relocate the fireworks before they got cancelled, from their traditional spot at City Dock, to the baseball fields at Volunteer Park. Weather permitting, the fireworks are scheduled to take place this year on July 3 at the park.

Lorne Cook, firefighter and a licensed pyrotechnician, explained the decision to relocate the fireworks.

"We have a fallout zone and an area we have to maintain while we're launching fireworks," Cook said. "There's got to be X amount of distance from the crowd and we're no longer able to maintain that area there [City Dock] with the barge company being there, the Stikine's development ... We had to come up with a game plan to move the fireworks into a safe zone."

One of the other ideas briefly considered, and brought up during the meeting, was using a barge to launch fireworks out on the water. Cook explained that this idea would take a lot of work, would be expensive, and would also put people on the barge at risk in case something went wrong with the fireworks. Stephanie Cook, with the chamber of commerce, added that she looked into hiring a private contractor to put on the fireworks show with a barge, but that would have cost between $80-100,000. Moving the fireworks to Volunteer Park, in short, was the most cost effective and safest option they had worked out so far. Lorne Cook added that they would be working on details such as transportation options for seniors and the handicapped, as the Fourth of July grew closer.

During the meeting, Stephanie Cook also encouraged people to sign up for volunteer positions for the Fourth, and for the annual royalty contest. The contest helps pay for all of the celebration's events, she said, and is also a long-running tradition for Wrangell. The sooner people sign up to participate in that, she said, the better.

"We really need volunteers for everything, always," she said. "Never have enough volunteers for the Fourth of July, we can always put someone somewhere."

The chamber of commerce can be reached at (907) 874-3901.