A metaphor for something or the other
By 
Federal officials ordered thousands of people to evacuate the National Mall in Washington on Saturday night ahead of a presidential speech and fireworks display to celebrate the nation’s 250th birthday. Crowds were told to seek shelter as a line of severe storms approached the city.
Park Police and other law enforcement officers started urging people to leave at about 7 p.m., just as the festivities were expected to start. Many attendees had stood in hourlong security lines in blistering heat, waiting to go through Secret Service metal detectors to get to the mall. And many of them refused to leave.
After lightning was spotted in the area, spectators were told to take shelter in nearby buildings, including Smithsonian museums, the Jefferson Memorial and several designated federal departments, including the Internal Revenue Service. But some of those buildings were not open to serve as shelters.
People crowded around the entrances of the Commerce Department, locked out. A nearby officer shrugged when someone asked how to get inside.
In a statement provided a little after 7:30 p.m., a spokesman for the Secret Service said that no one else was being admitted to the mall, and that “this action was taken solely in the interest of public safety.” It added, “We have no estimate for when screening may resume.”
Around 1965 or so, my parents took their four small children down to the National Mall for the July 4th fireworks display (my father was on a temporary work visa at NIH and we were on the verge of having to leave the country when it expired). My memory is that we saw exactly one firework before the whole thing was canceled because of wind. I was five so somebody can google whether this actually happened.
In any event nobody took that as a sign of the wrath of God or the imminent collapse of the Republic, unlike 60ish years later.