Sparks won’t be the only things flying this Fourth of July.
Revelers who once could illegally ignite fireworks and scatter before police officers arrive or who suffer from collective amnesia when questioned about who lit the fuse may still find themselves lighter in the wallet. For the first time in parts of Southern California, stealthy aerial surveillance will attempt to nab them in the act.
Riverside, Hemet and Brea, and possibly other cities, will launch drones to film illegal activity as municipalities increasingly marry new technology with old-fashioned legislation to prevent injuries and the type of fast-moving fires that devastated the region in January.
Offenders or their landlords will then receive a surprise: Those cities are mailing citations to property owners, in some cases without ever first contacting them, regardless of whether they were present when the fireworks sparkled, smoked or skyrocketed.
“This year, with the drone, people won’t even know they are being caught,” said Capt. Ray Mendoza, Riverside’s lead arson investigator.
“Think no one’s watching? Our drone says otherwise,” Hemet police warned.
In Brea, where Police Chief Adam Hawley told the City Council that education programs, increased patrols and heavier fines haven’t significantly deterred fireworks use, he decided a new approach was required.
“Fireworks pose significant safety risks to the residents of Brea and increase the potential for wildfires, especially in hillside areas,” Hawley said in a report that prompted councilmembers to rewrite the Municipal Code to include harsher financial penalties and hold property owners liable. “The discharge of commercial-style fireworks mortars, in particular, has become increasingly prevalent, leading to heightened concerns for public safety and property damage.”
Even the so-called safe and sane fireworks are illegal in those three cities, as well as aerial fireworks and those that zip along the ground. While legal in other states, they are outlawed everywhere in California.
Other cities are changing tactics as well.
Anaheim and Stanton, which both allow safe and sane fireworks, passed ordinances this spring increasing fines and holding property owners responsible. Stanton’s ordinance threatens to revoke the business licenses of places that repeatedly store and sell illegal fireworks.
Pasadena is also holding property owners responsible for fireworks violations.
The Eaton fire killed 18 people and destroyed some 9,000 homes and other buildings across Altadena and Pasadena, and just the mention of fireworks makes residents nervous, Pasadena spokeswoman Lisa Derderian said.
Officials there urge people to keep fireworks out of the city and not to shoot them off near the Rose Bowl during this year’s Fourth of July drone show, as they commonly do.
“Right now, the sound of fireworks, the smell of fireworks and the sight of fireworks are causing a lot of angst in our city,” Derderian said. “Please don’t traumatize our residents who have lost everything.”
So far, calls to police about fireworks are less than usual, Derderian said. She hopes that’s because fewer people are igniting them out of respect for their neighbors. (Derderian added that the city will not need to turn off its ShotSpotter gunfire-detection system on July 4 because it can differentiate between shots and fireworks explosions.)
The danger is real: Nationwide, fireworks injuries sent 14,700 people to hospitals in 2024, an increase of 52% from 9,700 in 2023, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.
Fireworks started more than 31,000 fires across the country, the report said.
Mendoza, the Riverside arson investigator, has witnessed the consequences of illegal use of fireworks. Three people were injured in a single explosion in the city last year that blew one man’s hand off. On July 21, teenagers playing with fireworks ignited the Hawarden fire that destroyed seven homes and damaged 18 others.
Mendoza and Riverside police recently demonstrated one of “numerous” drones they plan to deploy around the holiday. Detective Cole Tuggle donned goggles that allowed him to see what the drone’s camera is recording as he guided it with a handheld controller.
The drones, which can fly as high as 400 feet, are also equipped with a zoom lens, spotlight and speaker. It weighs less than 5 pounds, Tuggle said.
Calls and app messages to the city’s 311 system will alert drone operators to busy locations. Police will not respond to the drone’s location; instead, the drone will identify the address, and the city will mail a citation to the property owner. The minimum fine is $1,500.
Mendoza called the fines “our last resort” after an online education campaign.
“That’s going to be key to us being able to get to various locations immediately, on top of having our patrol teams out and about,” Mendoza said. “It will help us identify the location and get live video of individuals that are igniting fireworks.”
Brea has increased its fines to $250 for the first offense, $500 for the second and $1,000 for the third within 12 months from $100, $200 and $500.
Lt. Chris Haddad said he has worked 12 Independence Days and figures he has written “a couple of tickets.”
“Traditionally, it’s been hard to catch them,” Haddad said. “We have to catch them in the act.”
Now, officers will respond to complaints with a drone, and the operator will direct officers on the ground to the location. If the people have fled, the property owner will receive the citation, Haddad said.
Hemet is deploying its drones and officers similarly to Brea. The city has established a fireworks hotline, 951-765-3827, and an email address, pdfireworks@hemetca.gov. Fireworks may also be reported through the Police Department’s app.
In San Bernardino, where safe and sane fireworks may be sold and shot off south of the 210 Freeway and 30th Street but not elsewhere, the City Council in June considered a one-year moratorium on sales by nonprofit organizations because of safety concerns and the cost of enforcement. That figure was $270,000 in 2024, while taxes on sales brought in $97,000.
Police Chief Darren Goodman told councilmembers that a ban would not prevent residents from lighting fireworks, and the proposal was rejected.
Sgt. Christopher Gray, a police spokesman, declined to share enforcement plans. The department did post to social media a photo of 2,000 pounds of high-octane fireworks from out of state that officers seized.
In the city of Los Angeles, where the Palisades fire killed 12 people and destroyed almost 7,000 structures, the Police Department was not ready on June 26 to share its fireworks-enforcement plans.
“Unfortunately, there are no interviews on fireworks being granted at this time,” Officer Drake Madison wrote in an email.
The Southern California cities employing drones modeled their programs after the highly successful effort in Elk Grove in Sacramento County.
Two years ago, police there began using drones to identify problem areas, spokesman Sgt. Jason Jimenez said. They are used in conjunction with the technology in the city’s real-time center that includes traffic cameras and license plate readers.
In January, Jimenez said, Elk Grove became the first city to receive a waiver from the Federal Aviation Administration that allows it to send drones out of the line of sight of operators. This year, he said, its three drones will be able to reach any spot in the 42-square-mile city in less than 3 minutes.
“The reality is that you have large parties with many people, and it could be dangerous to send an officer or two into that,” Jimenez said. “Most times, people have been drinking. We find this is the easiest way to mitigate that.”
The city threatens a fine of $1,000 per individual firework. One man planning to ignite two pallets of fireworks was billed $100,000 in 2024 after officers caught him. The fine could have been more, Jimenez said.
“They stopped counting,” he said.