On the first day of July, 2025, our local area was rocked by a series of loud explosions and a fire at what turned out to be a fireworks facility operating outside the law. Yesterday I took several photos of the site. Not much has been done with it. Even debris in an adjacent field remains. This is, of course, a crime scene and the investigation is ongoing. The photos show the intensity of the fire and force of the explosions.
KCRA put together a video with a timeline of the events on the scary evening. In an earlier post I related my own experience.
Click on any photo to see a larger version. (No captions; they kind of speak for themselves.)
It was only the first of July, but some fireworks went off early. It made national news headlines, and even international. And it happened right here–or 8 miles (12.9 km) from the finca as the crow flies (or the smoke drifts). A fireworks facility just outside the small towns of Esparto and Madison in Yolo County experienced an explosion that led to a fire (or maybe it was the other way around). At about 5:50 p.m. there were three (I think–it happened so fast and was frankly terrifying) booms with massive concussion causing the entire house to shake. At the time, we were all clueless as to what had happened. I knew it was not an earthquake and it did not sound like a sonic boom. So I assumed an explosion of some sort.
By 6:30 there was quite a bit of smoke in the air. Here is a view from the back of the house, taken at about 6:30.
Smoke from Oakdale Fire at fireworks facility, Esparto, 1 July 2025
At 7:00 there was another big boom and shock wave–more intense than those at the start of the incident. The moment of that explosion was caught by a helicopter news camera by KCRA. There is not much left of this factory/warehouse now.
Power was knocked out for much of the area; we had an outage of about four hours. The Tesla PowerWalls we installed almost four years ago continue to be one of our best investments ever. The electricity stayed on for us, thanks to stored energy from our solar panels. Most of the rest of the neighborhood was pitch black after sundown (a few houses maybe also have backup batteries or more likely generators). And our own water supply, including irrigation, kept going via our storage tanks and RPS solar pump (a very local company). (The house and well are on different PG&E services, so the PowerWall backs up the house, but not the well or any water pumping.)
An investigation is underway; how the fire started remains to be determined. I will just say that I am absolutely appalled that a fireworks facility is located in this area, with all the dry grass and brush we have. Had this been a windy day, it could have been a significant disaster for the region. As it was, the fire burned 78 acres, mostly open land but apparently at least one home destroyed. It was brought under control quite quickly. I have contacted my state Assembly Member, Senator, and County Supervisor to urge them to take measures to ensure we do not continue to have such dangerous industrial activity in such a fire prone area.
The booms were unlike anything I have heard in most of my life. After realizing it was not an earthquake (but still checking my quake app just in case), I checked my FlightAware, worried that maybe there had been an aviation accident nearby. What I saw there was a CalFire helicopter on its way (apparently already in the area to monitor another small fire to the south). Only a bit later did Watch Duty (a fire/emergency app linked earlier) have the fire in its reporting, and then KCRA and other news outlets. The other thing I thought of right away was an explosion I remember when I was growing up in Orange County. It was a ship in the Port of Los Angeles that exploded. (I looked it up because I could not remember exactly when–December 1976.) Otherwise I’ve never experienced anything like what happened here yesterday, and it would be okay if I never did again.
Update: Of course, it was likely that there were workers present when this happened, and indeed it has been reported that there are seven persons unaccounted for.
Further update on the property and business owners. Really bad!
Fruits and Votes 