Gender Reveal Wildfire Starters Face Felony Charges

A California couple has been charged with multiple felonies, including involuntary manslaughter, after their gender reveal party caused a catastrophic wildfire.

The El Dorado Fire began on Sept. 5, 2020 when Refugio Manuel Jimenez Jr. and Angela Renee Jimenez lit a smoke bomb at a gender reveal party in the L.A.-suburb Yucaipa. The couple attempted to quell the embers with bottled water, but it wasn’t long before the dry grasses in the area ignited beyond their control. The wildfire that ensued would burn for months, scorching 22,000 acres of land, injuring more than a dozen individuals and killing 39-year-old veteran firefighter Charlie Morton.

The blaze is just one of many destructive side effects of gender reveal parties observed in the past several years. Countless parties have resulted in injuries and even deaths from homemade, explosive “reveal” devices, and subsequent fires are becoming more and more common. In 2017, Dennis Dickey started the Sawmill Fire at a gender reveal party that destroyed 45,000 acres of Colorado National Forest land and ultimately caused more than $8 million in damages.

Experts fear the worst is still to come. Last year was the worst fire season on record, with more than 4.2 million acres burnt by more than 9,900 fires in California alone. But with a historic drought and massive heatwaves sweeping the nation, 2021 could shatter those devastating numbers if humans don’t stop their reckless behaviors. The deadly combination of climate change and human error was found to have caused 88 percent of wildfires between 2016 and 2020.

Jenna Karvunidi, a blogger credited with the invention of gender reveal parties, has since condemned them and begged for parents-to-be to put an end to the outdated and disastrous practice. “Stop it. Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you,” she urged online. “I started to realize that nonbinary people and trans people were feeling affected by this, and I started to feel bad that I had released something bad into the world,” she told The Guardian in 2019.

The Jimenez’s have plead not guilty to the charges of manslaughter and three counts of “recklessly causing a fire with great bodily injury” thus far. Their trial is scheduled for Sept. 15, almost exactly a year after the fire was first set.

Predicting another year of disastrous wildfires, California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection issued a warning to residents. “Cal Fire reminds the public that with the dry conditions and critical fire weather, it doesn’t take much to start a wildfire,” the agency says. “Those responsible for starting fires due to negligence or illegal activity can be held financially and criminally responsible.”