How cuts at the federal level can affect finding answers to the Esparto explosion
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Federal cuts to the Chemical Safety Board may limit investigation of Esparto blast.
- Esparto fire officials charged minimal safety fees to a known fireworks facility.
- Cal-OSHA investigators bear responsibility for findings.
Four days after rocketing projectiles and a fireball engulfed the Esparto fireworks storage facility of the company Devastating Pyrotechnics, rescue workers have finally begun searching the site of the catastrophe to determine the fate of seven people missing since Tuesday. Some remains have been found, officials said Friday. Seven people are feared to be dead.
Meanwhile, the work of examining what went wrong, if laws were broken and if future catastrophes can be prevented has begun. But the investigation into Tuesday’s explosion will likely be missing the federal agency that usually investigates large-scale chemical explosions.
In June, the White House announced it was eliminating that agency, the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board.
That could leave the bulk of the work to the state Division of Occupational Safety and Health, better known as Cal-OSHA, which has said it would issue a report on the explosion within six months.
Esparto fire officials said a day after the blast and 78-acre blaze that they were aware the storage facility contained commercial fireworks. A report that details special assessments by the Esparto Fire Protection District, obtained by The Sacramento Bee, shows that officials charged the facility just $456 for a special safety assessment, far less than the fees paid by a local taqueria or a small supermarket.
The fire district’s report on special assessments cited a hypothetical example of a high-risk operation: “a fireworks factory.”
Jordan Barab, the former deputy assistant secretary of labor at the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration from 2009 to 2017, called the Esparto incident a tragedy and “a low frequency, high impact event. These are the kind of events that don’t happen very often, but when they do, a lot of people get killed.”
Barab, who also writes the influential Confined Space blog, said President Donald Trump’s administration put the agency on the chopping block.
“When I first heard about this huge explosion in California this week,” he said. “I instantly thought, ‘Wow, this happened right at the time when President Trump is getting rid of the Chemical Safety Board,’ the folks who ask ‘why’ and make recommendations how we can avoid similar tragedies in the future.”
Officials at the board did not respond to questions Friday as to whether they would conduct an investigation.
Barab said Trump’s decision to eliminate the chemical board, which recently published a report on a 2023 toxic explosion at a Martinez biodiesel refinery that left a worker critically burned, means that California will largely “be going it alone” when it comes to its investigation.
A deadly track record
Although fireworks are a ubiquitous and generally safe American and worldwide pastime, the industry occasionally has deadly incidents, especially at storage facilities.
An explosion in Orlando, Florida, at a fireworks warehouse killed four people in 2023. Federal OSHA regulators levied $109,000 in fines last year related to that incident and determined that “a Florida-based entertainment company could have prevented the deadly fire and explosion.”
Other deadly explosions have occurred abroad.
An explosion in The Netherlands at a fireworks storage facility killed 23 people and burned 400 homes in 2000. Last year, 21 people were killed in Thailand at a fireworks factory.
Despite those risks, the Esparto Fire Protection District charged Devastating Pyrotechnics five times less because of its assessed fire risk than a nearby Dollar General store.
A special assessment report of fire risk fees by the Esparto fire district shows the $456 paid. Property records show the building is owned by Sam Machado, a lieutenant with the Yolo County Sheriff’s Office, who once also had a firearms distribution company, Sam’s Guns, on the property.
Machado, who earned $317,428 in total compensation in 2023 as a lieutenant, according to Transparent California, has played a role in fire safety through the Sheriff’s Office. Machado’s home was one of the buildings destroyed in the inferno; a sheriff’s official also told ABC 10 that Machado was among those injured.
Minutes from a 2024 Yolo County Fire Safe Council meeting state that Machado presented a plan to provide residents with signs, to be used during emergencies, letting first responders know they had evacuated their properties.
Devastating Pyrotechnics is well known to local municipalities in Northern California, having contracted to do fireworks shows for three decades.
A proposal the company made in connection with a $40,000 contract with the city of St. Helena for a since-canceled celebration called Devastating Pyrotechnics “one of the premier” importers and manufacturers of display pyrotechnics in the West.
“We are the underdog, and enjoy that position and, most importantly, have a perfect safety record,” the company’s proposal stated. The plan for that event was to launch 1,275 shells during the city’s annual Fourth of July celebration.
Machado is not the only person affiliated with the property who has a connection with first responders and law enforcement in the area.
Craig Cutright, who was identified as a volunteer firefighter for the Esparto fire district, is listed as a “senior show producer” with Devastating Pyrotechnics. A 2019 contract with the city of Rio Vista states that Cutright has “15 years’ experience (with) Digital systems choreography.”
In 2023, Cutright formed another fireworks company, Blackstar Fireworks, which lists its address as 26454 County Road 23, the same site as the one where the explosion occurred. Cutright did not respond to text and voice messages seeking comment.
On Friday, the Esparto Fire Protection District said that Cutright would no longer serve as a volunteer firefighter.
Will fed agency be missed?
Barab, the former federal official, said OSHA and the chemical board’s investigations differ.
“With OSHA, they more or less have a checklist,” he said. “So they’ll go through and say, ‘Well, yeah, they were in violation of this part, not of this part.’ They’ll issue citations depending on which OSHA standards and which parts of OSHA standards were violated. The Chemical Safety Board, on the other hand, has no enforcement authority. But what they will do, kind of like (the National Transportation Safety Board), is they’ll go in and look at, kind of the deeper root causes of it.”
Cal-OSHA’s standard safety inspections are limited to levying fines. But one of its divisions, the Bureau of Investigations, can make recommendations on whether criminal charges should be filed. State investigators have been on the ground in Esparto along with officials from Cal Fire’s Office of the State Fire Marshal and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
A Sacramento Bee investigation last year found that the state was being covered by just one BOI investigator to look into worker deaths. Cal-OSHA’s parent agency has since hired 10 more criminal investigators and two supervisors.
The Bureau of Investigations can recommend that district attorneys levy seven-figure fines as well as pursue criminal charges, including manslaughter.
Julio Alfaro, who worked for a decade with Cal-OSHA’s criminal investigative division as a senior investigator, said he hopes that the new personnel can get to the bottom of what happened in Esparto. Still, he expressed concern that the unit had so many new employees that they may be too inexperienced to conduct a robust investigation.
State Sen. Christopher Cabaldon, D-West Sacramento, said that while “right now our top concern is getting answers for the loved ones of the seven people missing as a result of this devastating incident in my Senate district,” he says it’s crucial for Cal-OSHA and other agencies to conduct a thorough investigation. “We want to know what caused this facility, run by a licensed operator, to explode.”
This story was originally published July 5, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
