Illegal fireworks spark blazes — up to 37 in Contra Costa County
East Bay authorities are scrambling to deal with illegal fireworks — with police in San Leandro seizing more than a ton of the illicit products and firefighters in Contra Costa County putting out five blazes caused by revelers on the Fourth of July.
Contra Costa County fire officials said 37 fires were sparked over a sixhour period, and at least five were fireworksrelated.
“On a normal weekday evening we probably have zero fires, maybe one,” said Steve Hill, a Contra Costa County Fire Protection District spokesman. “There were 37 last night, so we’re inferring some things from that.”
Hill said 11 of the Contra Costa fires sparked between 9 to 9:30 p.m. Thursday. Photos from the fire protection district show glowing orange flames consuming a patch of brush in Martinez.
Fireworks are among the most common causes for catastrophic wildfires. A teen setting off fireworks near Oregon’s Columbia River Gorge in 2017 caused a 48,000acre blaze that took three months to contain.
San Leandro police recovered more than 2,000 pounds of fireworks from a storage facility in the city, the department said Thursday.
Officers responded Tuesday night to the StorQuest Self
Storage building at 1100 Davis St., where they found a 41yearold Oakland man and 51yearold Fremont man loading boxes filled with fireworks into a cargo van. The explosives included fireworks that could shoot up to 125 feet in the sky, police said.
On Thursday evening, San Leandro police found 200 pounds of fireworks, including hundreds of powerful M80 firecrackers, in an unoccupied car near Washington Manor Park.
Authorities said the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad has taken custody of the fireworks and will dispose of them.
Deputies pulled in an additional 500 pounds of explosives Thursday, bringing the total over the past month close to 3,000 pounds recovered in Alameda County, said Sgt. Ray Kelly, an Alameda County Sheriff’s Office spokesman.
“If the economy is good, and people have disposable income, they’re more inclined to buy fireworks and have a party at their house. When there’s a recession, there’s less fireworks,” Kelly said.
A sideshow in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood drew around 200 people to the intersection of 42nd Avenue and Interstate 880, where participants set off illegal fireworks. Oakland police also arrested 12 people for celebratory gunfire.
East Bay law enforcement said they have pulled in more than a ton of fireworks every year for the last four years. That hasn’t stopped revelers from putting on their own shows.
Tight budgets forced some East Bay cities to cancel their sanctioned firework displays in past years, victim among them Oakland, San Leandro, Livermore and Hercules.
Safe and sane fireworks — those that don’t explode or fly — are legal in just a few Bay Area cities: Dublin, Newark, Union City, Pacifica, San Bruno, Gilroy, Petaluma, Rohnert Park, Sebastopol, Cloverdale, Rio Vista, Dixon and Suisun City, according to California Fireworks Safety & Education Program. Gwendolyn Wu is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: gwendolyn.wu@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @gwendolynawu