Starting Over from Ground Zero

A menacing barbed-wire fence surrounds the 60-acre site amid the scrubby pine barrens. Along the fence, ominous No Trespassing signs warn of explosives and the dangers of smoking. Inside, the nerve center of the complex consists of three trailers, behind which is a rutted field used for testing explosives. Farther down the road are three small concrete huts where the devices are packaged. Beyond the huts are several rows of bunkers surrounded by 10-foot high walls of sand, where explosive materials are stored in huge metal containers.

This is not a chemical plant in Libya, or a Latin American insurgency center, or even the site of a U.S. weapons facility. It's the headquarters of Fireworks by Grucci Inc., the country's best-known pyrotechnics company, on Long Island. Patterned after a military installation, the Grucci complex in Brookhaven, New York, roughly an hour's drive east of New York City on Long Island, is a modern fireworks facility. If it all seems a little intimidating and sterile at first, the impression quickly disappears after a visitor enters the main trailer.

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