A man whose family’s gender reveal photo shoot sparked a Southern California wildfire that killed a firefighter in 2020 has pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter, prosecutors said Friday.
The El Dorado Fire erupted on Sept. 5, 2020, when Refugio Jimenez Jr. and Angelina Jimenez and their young children staged a photo shoot for their baby gender reveal at El Dorado Ranch Park in Yucaipa, at the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains.
A smoke-generating pyrotechnic device was set off in a field and quickly ignited dry grass on a scorching day. The couple frantically tried to use bottled water to douse the flames and called 911, authorities said.
Even worse, it was a photoshoot not a live event. They could have taken their static picture without creating any fire, and add in any visual smoke, fire, and sparks edited into the photo without any risk to the environment.
The only winning strategy is to not play the big gender reveal game.
I’m not advocating for gender reveal events. I personally don’t see the appeal. However, I recognize that people do all kinds of benign stuff that I don’t care about, but which interests them and doesn’t hurt anyone so I’m fine with it. They could have done this in a way that didn’t hurt anyone and still got the photo result they wanted. Instead they hurt people. That, or the risk of that, is where someone’s benign isolated interests become subject to us caring about it.