Tips on Illegal Fireworks Not Probed Before Deadly Esparto, CA, Blast

Two years before a deadly explosion killed seven workers at a fireworks warehouse in Esparto owned by Devastating Pyrotechnics, another series of explosions leveled part of a storage facility in San Jose, allegedly caused by fireworks from the same company.

On June 14, 2023, the three-story building crumbled, fireworks whistled through the sky and the explosions rumbled the ground miles away. An entire wing of the Public Storage facility was charred and flattened.

Neither this fireworks explosion, nor the confiscation of Devastating Pyrotechnics fireworks at a Southern California warehouse last May, prompted the state’s fire agency to investigate Devastating Pyrotechnics before the fatal blast in Esparto on July 1, 2025.

The Office of the State Fire Marshal, the division of Cal Fire that regulates and enforces fireworks laws, received an email two weeks after the San Jose explosion flagging Devastating Pyrotechnics as a source of illegal fireworks, and describing the company as part of “a growing problem” of dangerous black market fireworks flooding California.

Had state officials followed up and inspected the sprawling property in Esparto, they would have found a recently constructed warehouse packed floor to ceiling with illegal fireworks, and volatile chemicals used in the manufacturing of black market illegal fireworks.

But Cal Fire never looked into the tip. At the time, the warehouse in Esparto had been in operation for around a year, in plain sight, with the knowledge, and in some cases assistance, of local authorities.

Even though the new warehouse was constructed in 2022, the company had been operating on a property owned by Sam Machado, a Yolo County deputy sheriff, for years. Machado told county officials that a proposed warehouse would be used to store almonds, with no mention of fireworks. The Esparto fire chief, who accepted free fireworks shows from the company, signed the building permit. Cal-OSHA later determined the warehouse lacked a sprinkler system and other safety measures.

State Fire Marshal Daniel Berlant said in a November interview he was not familiar with the emailed tip, though documents show he was copied on the email. Asked again a month later, he acknowledged his agency received the email, but said that it did not contain enough information to warrant follow up from investigators.

“(The tip) was received after the San Jose fire, it contained no allegations or sufficient details to initiate an investigation,” Berlant said in an email. “Nor was there an explicit tie to the San Jose incident.”

Berlant said the San Jose Police Department led the investigation of the storage facility explosion, though his office confiscated fireworks police had found in additional storage lockers.

“The San Jose Police Department contacted us after the seizure,” Berlant said. “They reported 30,000 pounds of fireworks. We confiscated those fireworks for them. They led their own investigation with no assistance from our office.”

The San Jose Police Department referred questions about the source of the fireworks to Cal Fire.

The tip connecting the San Jose fire to Devastating Pyrotechnics came from Dennis Revell, a public relations consultant who represents TNT Fireworks. Revell told The Bee the email was sent as a follow-up to a conversation about the San Jose fire with a Cal Fire arson and bomb investigator.

Though the email did not specifically name the San Jose fire, it cited data that showed Devastating Pyrotechnics was importing tons of fireworks that were illegal in California.

“In June 2023, when investigators with the State Fire Marshal’s Office asked for help identifying where the illegal fireworks involved in the San Jose storage unit fire might have come from, I secured the import monitoring information for them. It was the right thing to do,” Revell told The Bee in an email.

Charley Weeth, an expert who has helped lead fireworks accident investigations and works with federal authorities to author fireworks regulations, said with Revell’s tip, Cal Fire had enough information to take action.

“That was a substantial lead and someone could have spent 10 to 15 minutes on Google looking into this company,” he said. “If they had done so, Cal Fire would have seen that there was something very wrong there.”

Weeth has extensively studied the Esparto disaster, including viewing raw footage of smoke plumes from the explosion captured by helicopters.

“What was happening there was so reckless and illegal,” he said. “Any real inspection in Esparto would have led to arrests and seizure of fireworks.”

Kenneth Chee, the owner of Devastating Pyrotechnics, through his attorney, Douglas Horngrad, declined to comment on the 2023 San Jose fire.

Weeth said the import data from Revell revealed “this company was importing an incredible amount of consumer fireworks which are not legal in California.”

Far more disturbing, Weeth said, was the raw chemicals Devastating Pyrotechnics imported in 2020, which he said should have also concerned the U.S Department of Homeland Security as well as Cal Fire.

Shipping documents show that the company imported 120 drums of aluminum powder in 2020. It also brought in 750 pallets of potassium perchlorate in two shipments later that year.

“That’s a huge amount, more than any legitimate fireworks company I am aware of imports,” Weeth said, noting those two chemicals are used to make flash powder, often used in both black market and professional fireworks.

“This is dangerous stuff, sensitive to impact, friction, heat and electrostatic discharge,” he said “Yet the company had no (federal) license to manufacture fireworks, none whatsoever. So what the heck was going on? Someone should have looked.”

“To be clear, it’s not that these are bad people,” Weeth added. “If someone at Cal Fire had this information, they’re probably kicking themselves now. Not because they’re afraid for their job, but because of the terrible tragedy. People that go into the fire service, especially the professionals, they’re in it for a really good reason.”

The seizure in Commerce

It wasn’t the first time that Cal Fire would fail to connect the dots between seized illegal fireworks and Devastating Pyrotechnics. In May 2025, the agency’s record seizure of more than 500,000 pounds of fireworks at a warehouse in Commerce was also linked to Devastating Pyrotechnics, just two months before the Esparto blast.

The State Fire Marshal has declined to provide public records related to that raid to The Bee, citing the ongoing criminal investigation into Esparto.

In his November interview, Berlant said Johnny Chek, the owner of the Commerce warehouse told investigators that the majority of the illegal fireworks in the storage facility belonged to Kenneth Chee, the owner of Devastating Pyrotechnics.

Berlant said he did not view that as conclusive enough to warrant immediate investigation into Chee’s company.

“There was a lot of finger pointing and a lot of assertions made by that individual, specifically Mr. Chek,” Berlant said. “And so as part of any investigation, we then had to start beginning the process to unwind what was true, what were false statements.”

Chek’s attorney said the information his client provided was concerning enough that it should have prompted an inspection of the Esparto warehouse.

“I worked for the state fire marshal for 20 years, so this does not make me happy to say, but this was not good detective work,” said the attorney, Randy Roxson, who retired from Cal Fire in 2006. “The state fire marshal should have inspected Devastating Pyrotechnics in Esparto after my client told them the illegal fireworks belonged to them. And it sounds like they failed to take action after this fire in San Jose.”

Concerns about Devastating Pyrotechnics

According to a police investigative police report following the storage facility fire, San Jose Police zeroed in on two suspects, Anthony DaSilva and a partner, Nathaniel Valassis, days after the incident.

DaSilva and Valassis eventually pled guilty to fireworks-related charges. DaSilva was determined to be the primary trafficker and sentenced to a year of home confinement, and a fine of $10,000. Valassis faced similar sanctions.

Mark Arnold, a lawyer representing DaSilva and Valassis, said his clients were not willing to answer The Bee’s questions about Devastating Pyrotechnics, or whether anyone in law enforcement sought information about their suppliers.

“I can’t provide any further information.” Arnold said. “My clients are understandably concerned about being drawn into a very serious situation.”

According to the San Jose police records, search warrants were executed on three residences connected to the subjects on June 29, 2023, leading to the discovery of an illegal firearm, 200 grams of cocaine, 13 ounces of methamphetamine and what were described as “pay owe sheets” with “drug and fireworks transactions.”

Earlier police had converged on the Public Storage facility in Blossom Valley, a mixed residential and commercial neighborhood in San Jose.

An entire portion of the storage facility, where two containers had been used to store fireworks, was destroyed, with two floors collapsing onto the ground floor. But a separate storage building on the property was spared. DaSilva, using a fake name, had rented three more storage lockers in that section.

San Jose police turned over the seized fireworks to the state fire marshal.

“All fireworks were removed from the storage lockers and placed into the fire marshal’s vehicle…and taken to Sacramento,” the San Jose Police report states. Detectives carefully detailed logs of the seized materials, noting serial numbers and the weight of every box of fireworks seized.

Days after the fireworks were seized, the contraband was put on display at a fireworks enforcement news conference that Cal Fire held alongside Sacramento City and Metro fire departments. The San Jose fire was not mentioned at the press conference.

Berlant addressed the media there, as he stood near tables of confiscated illegal fireworks. All the seized fireworks lacked the “safe and sane” stamp of the fire marshal, he said, rendering them illegal in California.

Citing hundreds of fires every year caused by fireworks, Berlant underscored the problem illegal fireworks pose.

“It’s not just the number of fires that are concerning us,” he said. “It is the destruction, the injuries, and in some cases, the fatalities that also come with it.”

On the sidelines of the event, Bryan Gouge, a senior arson and bomb investigator for the State Fire Marshall, talked with Revell.

Revell, who frequently testifies at the state capital on fireworks policy, said that he asked Gouge about the fire in San Jose and tons of seized fireworks he had heard about.

Gouge, Revell said, explained that he had determined that much of the seized fireworks were manufactured by T-SKY, a Chinese company.

Revell then used an import monitoring service called the Piers Report, which monitors U.S customs trade data to try to determine who in Northern California had imported fireworks from T-SKY.

“In June 2023, when investigators with the State Fire Marshal’s Office asked for help identifying where the illegal fireworks involved in the San Jose storage unit fire might have come from, I secured the import monitoring information for them. It was the right thing to do,” Revell told The Bee.

Revell was startled to find just one Northern California company, Devastating Pyrotechnics, had imported from T-SKY – and the company lacked a license to sell consumer fireworks in California.

Revell wrote Gouge, cc’ing Berlant and several other Cal Fire officials.

“Bryan, I had TNT Fireworks run the attached Piers report on T-Sky Fireworks….there are two shipments to a company called Devastating Pyrotechnic,“ Revell said. “There is a growing problem of enhanced 1.4G product that is coming into the U.S. that is supposed to be ‘For Professional Use Only’ that some companies in the East are selling to consumers.”

Revell added that a T-SKY shipment had left the port of Oakland, in custody of Devastating Pyrotechnics.

“The 6/11/2023 shipment was in excess of 41,000 pounds,” Revell wrote.

A Penske truck filled with fireworks unloaded that same day at the San Jose storage unit, according to the police investigative report. The fire occurred three days later.

Revell said he has confidence in Berlant, whom he described as an impressive leader dealing with scarce resources.

“If my email from 2023 now contributes to a fuller understanding of how illegal fireworks enter and move through California, and helps policymakers fortify the system, I’m grateful for that,” he said.

Berlant expressed resolve to get to the bottom of Esparto.

“We have taken, arguably, dozens, if not hundreds, of other fire incident reports that are within our responsibility, any fire on state property we’re charged with investigating, and we are prioritizing Esparto,” he said in the November interview.

Days after, Berlant said in a follow-up email that the state fire marshal would now subscribe to a similar import shipping data service to the one Revell used to make the connection to Devastating Pyrotechnics following the San Jose fire.

“It’s first important to note that it is not only the law, but the responsibility of fireworks companies to provide us certain notifications when fireworks are being imported into our State,” he wrote.

Weeth said that typically the U.S. Chemical Safety Board would issue a report on an accident of the magnitude of Esparto, “to ensure this doesn’t happen again.”

But given that President Donald Trump has effectively dismantled that agency, ​​he said, the state should act.

“I would think that the governor or the legislature may want to appoint an independent commission to look into how this tragedy occurred,” he said.

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