Painting the town red, white and green

The UAE was awash of red, green and white as thousands of Emiratis and expatriates untied to celebrate the 37th National Day.

In the capital of Abu Dhabi, Emiratis across the city were seen cruising the streets in their decorated vehicles as they proudly waved the national flag to honour the occasion.

To mark the special event the Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority and Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage, with the support of Abu Dhabi Municipality provided three days of festivities, which were spread across Abu Dhabi, Al Ain and Madinat Zayed/Western region from December 2 to 4.

The celebrations included three nights of stunning firework and laser shows, carnivals, heritage demonstrations, micro-light plane performances and free-to-attend concerts by some of the best names in the Arab music scene.

The company providing the lavish sky display was Abu Dhabi-based Igual Gulf Fireworks, which shipped-in around 25 tonnes of specially designed shells from Spain and Switzerland for the event.

The company's business development manager, Mohammed Ali, said at 8.30pm on December 2, a 45 minutes pyrotechnics display was fired simultaneously from two, 100 metre long floating pontoons, which were located in separate locations - the Emirates Palace beachfront and along the Corniche - to light-up the sky.

A team of 20 technicians worked to pre-rig the fireworks onto the two barges, which were then towed individually into place via a boat.

The barges each rested about 300m back from the shoreline to ensure the audience was kept at a safe distance from the firing location as some shells reached a height of 200m.

Additionally, a further two, 20 minute sky-shows were also fired from specially designated land-based areas, one in the desert setting of Bida Bint Saoud in Al Ain and one that illuminated the Cultural Centre at Madinat Zayed.

All the pyrotechnic shows were synchronised to specifically chosen harmonies by the Abu Dhabi Culture and Heritage Club and the fireworks team. And to give each show an individual feel, several genres of music were featured throughout the displays.

The nightly fireworks also featured unique and creative looks as different shells were selected and assembled separately for each show.

For the additional two nights on December 3 and 4, the shows, at Abu Dhabi Corniche, Al Ain and Madinat Zayed only, all ran for duration of 20 minutes.

Throughout the three-day firework display, more than 70,000 shells, ranging in size from 30mm to 300mm, were synchronised and triggered in time to the selected audio tracks via three computer run high-end wireless digital firing systems.

To provide the audio coverage for the musical pyrotechnic show Dubai-based event management company, Sound and Stage Fz LLc supplied around two kilometres of sound coverage to the Abu Dhabi Corniche and the Emirates palace area, around 5000sqm for Al Ain and the same for the Madinat Zayed area, with the equipment supplied by its mother company in Lebanon (Sound on Stage).

Along the Corniche, Sound and Stage erected seven purpose built, 10m high towers, spaced at 250m apart to hang the main Electro-Voice system.

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