MIDLAND, Texas — On the Fourth of July, in Midland, some viewers were able to witness a firework show and a little bit of a drone show. According to NewsWest 9 on scene of the Star Spangled Salute, the drone show did not go a planned due to the weather conditions on Thursday night.
Residents and community members did wonder why the Midland Chamber of Commerce chose not to postpone or cancel their show like the City of Odessa did.
Many say you can plan a pretty event, but you cannot predict the weather.
"It's West Texas, if it’s one thing we can count on is the weather not to cooperate with us," said Justin Bunch, the Midland County emergency management coordinator.
A 4th of July celebration is one thing to count on every year.
That's why the Midland Chamber was ahead of the game in planning their Star Spangled Salute.
"We actually start several weeks beforehand in the planning process," Bunch said. "We will have meetings with the Chamber along with the city, the county's different agencies, law enforcement agencies. We'll create what’s called an incident action plan."
The president for the Midland Chamber of Commerce, Evan Thomas, said they started the day with a health and safety meeting that over 30 health and safety officers attended.
"We have officers on hand from Midland Police Department, Sheriff's Department, Fire Department, the Fire Marshal and EMS," Thomas said. "We go over our plans for the day and make sure that everyone is aware of their assignments and what we're going to do to make sure that our event is safe and goes off without a hitch."
In terms of West Texas weather, the incident action plan also includes constant communication with the National Weather Service.
"Like yesterday we saw there was a little storm coming, so we started [to get] in touch with the National Weather Service and contacting them probably every hour or so," Bunch said. "As the event started, we got to the evening, it was more like every 30 minutes, actually. When we saw that the storm coming and the wind starting picking up."
Due to the Star Spangled Salute being the Midland Chamber's event, they had the final say on how the remainder of the night would play out.
"We did have some rain develop and we had some sustained winds, but what we kept hearing from [the National Weather Service]," Thomas said. "What we ultimately saw was that by the time 10:00 p.m. rolled around and it was even a little bit before that, I'd say it was closer to 9:30 p.m., but by the time fireworks shows time frame came around that the rain had stopped and that and that the winds had died down, which is what we were looking for."
In situations like this, the emergency team is there to inform and advance unless there is a drastic turn of events like a tornado or an active shooter.
"If we needed to, we would have canceled," Thomas confirmed. "We couldn't have postponed until the next day for various reasons, so if we would have postponed it, it wouldn't have happened and that would have been fine, if it was necessary. Ultimately, based on all the feedback from the experts, we determined to just go forward and we also got a lot of positive feedback about the fact that we did."
A reminder that public safety will always remain number one for everyone.