Esparto, a year later — how the deadly blast engulfed families. ‘Lives are ruined’
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- Seven people died in the July 1, 2025 explosion in Esparto.
- Five men were each charged with seven murder counts and explosives charges.
- Year later, families of the victims report ongoing grief, trauma and legal actions.
The sun beat down and wind chimes sounded quietly in the tiny Central Valley city of Hughson, where Tiffany Nolan Rodriguez had come to the local cemetery to talk with her husband.
She wanted to know: should she speak to a reporter about what it’s like to carry on without him, a year after he died in a Yolo County fireworks explosion that prosecutors say was caused by negligence so severe that it amounts to murder?
The cemetery, where Carlos Rodriguez-Mora lies next to his wife’s grandmother, is often the only place where she and her children can find peace, Nolan Rodriguez said.
She visited again the next day.
Rodriguez-Mora, 42, was one of seven people killed last July 1 when a warehouse filled with workers preparing for Independence Day fireworks displays blew up in the community of Esparto near Woodland. The blast ignited a fire that raced through magazines storing explosives for two companies, destroying homes and farmland as it burned for days.
The year since has been one of night-terrors and grief for the families who lost loved ones. Five men, including the owner of the fireworks company and a former Yolo County sheriff’s lieutenant who owns the property where the explosives were stored, are charged with murder.
All are living with the aftermath of tragedy in the old and literary sense: an inferno of death, ignited by what authorities say was hubris and a lack of care, that in the end damaged the lives of everyone involved.
One family’s story
The explosion that killed Rodriguez-Mora, Angel Voller, Neil Li, Joel Melendez, Christopher Bocog, Jesus Ramos and Jhony Ramos was triggered about seven minutes after Nolan-Rodriguez last spoke to her husband on the phone. She called to ask him to please stop eating watermelon right from the refrigerator with a spoon. Just cut it up, she said.
He was working late getting ready for the Fourth of July shows planned by Devastating Pyrotechnics, the company that used the warehouse, so she reminded him to come into the house quietly when he was done.
“I love you,” she said.
Twenty minutes later, she received a call from his friend and co-worker, Julian Voller, saying there had been an incident at the Esparto property. At first, she said, they thought it was a plane crash.
“My whole world turned upside down in 20 minutes,” Nolan-Rodriguez said.
Loss, she now knows, can scream out at you in the most mundane circumstances. For Nolan-Rodriguez, 42, her husband’s absence made itself particularly clear two weeks after the explosion. Football season had started for her son Jordan, then 10, and neither she nor her aunt, who had been so present and helpful throughout the ordeal, could figure out how to help him put on his uniform and equipment.
That was a job, she said, that Carlos handled. He loved doing it because he hadn’t been able to play sports during his own childhood, and he was determined his kids would have that chance.
Now Carlos comes to the children in their dreams, she said. Earlier this month, he visited Paige, 14, to say he was so proud that she was graduating from the eighth grade.
Jordan, now 11, woke up the other night at 2 a.m., his arms outstretched. Carlos was there, Jordan said, but the boy couldn’t reach him.
“He was reaching, saying, ‘I can’t touch you, Dad,’” she said. “We just laid in bed and cried for a few minutes.”
Crumpled metal, melted tires and police tape
The explosion and fire that killed Rodriguez-Mora burned so hot and destroyed so much that Nolan-Rodriguez had to bring her son Jordan to the coroner’s office to provide a DNA sample — just so authorities could identify his father’s remains.
A year later, the satellite image on Google Maps still shows the property at 26454 County Road 23 as it was, with at least two houses, a swimming pool and about a dozen other buildings. Cars and trucks are parked next to long skinny structures, some of which are also surrounded by dozens of smaller containers.
But today’s reality still reflects the devastation from the fire and explosion.
The house where Samuel and Tammy Machado lived, on land inherited from her father, a fireworks enthusiast, is gone. The remnants of charred trees and a brick half-wall and chimney mark its location. A broad white rectangle of concrete with a deep crater running across its middle shows what’s left of the warehouse.
Police tape still circles a rectangular area, and round wooden disks that once capped tubular fireworks containers lie scattered on the ground.
On a corner of the property, burned out vehicles have been placed in a neat cluster. One, a large van, is blown out along the side, scarred by a large hole ringed by pieces of metal that look like a sculpture made of foil bending back upon itself.
Bulldozers and a John Deere digger sit behind the house and near the concrete pad. In front, an old tractor that once stood on display as an antique is still there, its tires and the material around its steering wheel hanging in melted strands.
It was here that Kenneth Chee, an optometrist who owned Devastating Pyrotechnics, first began to contract with Tammy Machado’s father, Jerry Matsumura, to store fireworks for his budding business about 16 years ago. The Machados inherited a portion of his land, as did Tammy Machado’s sister, Reiko Matsumura, and the family leased space to Chee as he built his enterprise ever larger, court documents say.
Cash payments and explosives
After the Machados and Matsumura inherited the property, Chee began expanding his business, aiming to become a major wholesaler and importer of fireworks, prosecutors and others have said.
By 2025, the company had imported about 11 million pounds of products that either purported to be fireworks or could be used to make them, a grand jury said in its April indictment of Chee, Sam Machado and others accused of murder, conspiracy and illegal possession, sale and storage of explosives, among other charges.
Corners were cut, and false statements were made, about the company and Chee’s plans, the indictment says. An application to build a new warehouse falsely stated that it would be an agricultural building, the indictment said. Chee installed no safety measures, prosecutors said.
He was barred from obtaining a federal license to import and sell explosives, so two other men, Jack Lee and Gary Chan, applied instead, using their own names and a slightly different corporate moniker to obtain permission, it said.
Some of the fireworks they imported and made were “overcharged,” meaning they had more explosives in them than was legal, and were sold on the black market, prosecutors said in a court filing opposing bail for Chee.
Chan, who along with Lee is also facing murder charges, told federal authorities that his license, for a company dubbed Devastating Pyro Displays, was not connected to Chee or to Devastating Pyrotechnics, the indictment says.
At Chee’s request, Machado back-dated his lease agreement to falsely show that Devastating Pyro Displays, rather than Devastating Pyrotechnics, was his tenant, the indictment alleges. They worked out a deal for Machado, who is also facing weapons and tax charges, to be paid in cash, it says.
Chee and a fifth person, Douglas Tollefsen, brought employees to work there knowing the site was dangerous, and did not inform authorities, the indictment says.
In announcing the arrests of the five men in April, then-Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig called the operation a “massive and illegal fireworks and explosives operation.”
It is a contention that the men accused of murder, along with three others charged with lesser crimes, have denied in court papers, though not all have entered pleas in their cases. They view it as an industrial accident — a tragedy, but not a crime.
Both sides suggest that the spark for the explosion was a common mishap among people who handle fireworks — the faulty placement of an electronic igniter used to set off pyrotechnics. Shortly before 6 p.m. on that sweltering Tuesday, as the temperature outside began to slip from its high of 98 degrees, one of the seven friends and colleagues at work that day had attempted to insert an igniter, and it gave off a spark.
Criminal Charges
On April 3 of this year, a Yolo County criminal grand jury indicted eight people in connection with the blast.
Chee, Machado, Chan, Lee and Tollefsen were each charged with seven counts of murder, one for each person who died, along with counts related to explosives and other violations. Craig Cutright, who was operating a separate company, Blackstar Fireworks, at the site after previously working with Chee, faced explosives and conspiracy charges. Ronald Botelho, who had been arrested months earlier on fireworks charges in Crescent City, was also charged with illegal possession of explosives and conspiracy.
Tammy Machado was charged in a separate indictment with child endangerment and harming an animal, as well as tax and mortgage violations. So far, only the Machados have entered pleas in their cases. Both have pleaded not guilty, and both are out on bail.
The Machados both worked for the Yolo County Sheriff’s Department, Sam as a law enforcement officer and Tammy as an administrative employee. Cutright was a volunteer firefighter with the county. Their connections protected them, a Yolo County civil grand jury said in a report released in March.
After receiving a tip in 2022 that the property was being used by two pyrotechnics businesses, County Building Services said they would investigate, the civil grand jury said.
“Department officials in a series of emails said they were going out to the site to conduct an inspection, noting that they would ‘tread lightly’ as the property was owned by sheriff’s deputies … ‘including deputies that we work with,’” the report said.
County ordinances, the report said, “prohibited fireworks at that location.”
This week, the county disputed the report.
The Machados said their lives have also been affected by the blast.
“The same explosion that took the lives of seven people destroyed the Machado residence, the warehouses, and other improvements,” attorney David Fischer says in a motion requesting bail for Sam Machado.
Tammy Machado, who is not represented by Fischer, had to flee for her life while recovering from surgery, his motion states. The blast destroyed family records, photos, clothing furniture and personal items.
Sam Machado was away from the property when the blast occurred, rushing back as soon as he heard, Fischer’s motion states.
“They walked away with the clothes they were wearing and the vehicle Samuel had been driving,” Fischer says. .
Living with loss
But the losses suffered by Nolan-Rodriguez and her children, by Marisol Ramos, who lost two of her sons, or by Matt Voller, who also lost a son, are of a deeper, darker sort. They ripple through families and communities, imparting pain that can be passed on for generations.
Maria Soriano’s partner, Christopher Bocog, was killed in the explosion, leaving her alone to raise their child.
“His death permanently changed our lives, and our home has been left with a deep sense of loss and emotional instability,” Soriano said in court.
Maria Melendez had an infant and was pregnant with her second child when her husband, Joel Melendez, was killed in the Esparto blast. He was 28 years old, working hard to provide for them in whatever way he could — the barbering he loved to do, landscaping and in the high fireworks season around Fourth of July, helping out at Devastating Pyrotechnics.
Like others who worked there, Joel Melendez was brought into the fold by friends and family members. His father was Marisol Ramos’ partner. Angel Voller was the brother of a good friend, Julian Voller, who escaped death only because he had taken the day off for his daughter’s birthday. Julian and Joel were close to Rodriguez-Mora.
Since his death, Melendez has thrown herself into caring for her two children, and advocating for the families of the men who died in the explosion. Jeremiah, who was born after his father died and bears the English version of his middle name, is getting his first tooth and starting to roll over. Josiah, almost 2, was recently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder.
Her grief is deep. She sees a therapist twice a week, but it’s still hard. She keeps Joel’s ashes in an urn by her bedside.
The past year, she said, has just been about surviving. Even the idea of accepting what really happened is still an abstraction, something to work on in the coming year, she said.
“We did everything together,” said Melendez, 27. “We shopped together. We went to bed every night together.”
Before the explosion, Melendez, a medical assistant and phlebotomist, was taking steps to turn her beloved hobby of photography into paid work, with Joel’s support.
Since he was killed, shooting photos has been difficult. But she did recently take a key step, buying a new lens.
She tries to stay healthy, working out and focusing on her kids. But sometimes she spirals.
“This is a whole different type of grief, when you lose someone so suddenly and violently,” Melendez said.
Along with other survivors, Melendez has filed a wrongful death claim against the county and others in connection with the blast. She has also spoken in court, arguing against bail for Machado, Chee and the other defendants.
But she does have a certain amount of empathy for them. Trials have yet to begin and justice to play out, but none of the defendants’ lives will be the same either, she knows.
“I’m angry, because it’s unnecessary trauma that we’re having to deal with because of their greed,” she said. “But they’re losing their lives in a different way.”
Chee was arrested while on vacation at Disney World’s Hollywood Studios in Florida with his family. Cutright’s son was injured in the blast. If convicted on all counts, Machado, Chee, Chan, Lee, and Tollefsen could all spend the rest of their lives in prison.
“Everyone’s lives are ruined,” Melendez said.
