Just curious. What altitude do professional pyrotechnics reach? Amateur rockets can reach a mile, but they would not be leaving a trail at their maximum altitude.
By "professional pyrotechnics" I assume you mean hollywood stunt stuff, not military. And that would be the same stuff as the amateur rockets. Not the Estes stuff, but the real Amateur rockets, and they can reach much more than a mile, and burn times *might* be long enough to still be burning at 1 mile.
But for a fact, no one with any brains would be launching model rockets in the place unless they were deliberatly trying to screw with airliners.
The north side has a waterway and marina, and the south side has an oil refinery. Neither place where someone could set up a model rocket launcher without being seen. The beach has plenty of people, and the old housing complex at the edge of the beach is viewable from the road.
I suppose someone could have done this from a boat, but there's almost no time where there are not other boats in the vicinity and the launch would have certianly been seen, and heard, from another boat, or from people on the beach.
Aircraft pass over that place every couple of minutes, or even more often. So no one can make an innocent mistake about where they're launching.
My guess is that at best this was some kind of stunt, or worse, it was an actual attack with some home made rocket. If it had been a real weapon, it likely would have hit the plane.
Kids rockets can reach a mile.
The amateur rocket altitude record is something like 77 miles (last I checked). These things are Mach 2+ and with a guidance system could easily down an airplane.