On the 5th of September, 2020, at around 10:20am,
an extended family group gathered on the edge of the El Dorado Ranch Park
in Yucaipa, California. They were there for a gender reveal party - a celebration intended
to reveal the gender of an as-yet-unborn child in a surprising and dramatic fashion. Unfortunately,
the exact mechanism this family chose for their big reveal would soon result in a devastating
and fatal wildfire, which would go on to ravage the area for months to come. It would be just
the latest in a string of devastating incidents resulting from failed gender reveal parties.
The very first gender reveal party was a small good-natured celebration hosted
by blogger and journalist Jenna Karvunidis. She shared images of a cake she had baked,
plain on the outside but containing coloured icing on the inside to indicate to her friends
and family the gender of her baby: pink for a girl, blue for a boy. The simple idea was a hit,
and inspired numerous copycats. The trend grew in popularity over the next few years,
and by the early 2010s gender reveal events were becoming increasingly elaborate.
No longer satisfied with revealing coloured icing inside cakes, parents-to-be turned to other more
dramatic reveals: boxes filled with coloured helium balloons, balloons filled with coloured
powder, coloured fireworks, pinatas, confetti fountains, smoke bombs, even tyre burnouts.
Creative and original gender reveals garnered praise, hundreds of thousands of likes,
and even media coverage - attention which some parents-to-be couldn't help but pursue.
Given that bigger and more ostentatious reveals would garner more recognition,
something of an arms race began, with parents putting together bigger
and bigger spectacles with each passing year. Reports of minor incidents and media
coverage criticizing the craze ironically only served to propagate it further.
The desire for a spectacular reveal was what led to one of the first incidents of significant
destruction as a result of a gender reveal party, on the 23rd of April, 2017. Dennis Dickey,
a border patrol agent, wanted an explosive reveal, and decided to use a box packed
with Tannerite - a highly-explosive compound designed to detonate when shot with a firearm.
By adding coloured powder to the box Dickey would be able to create
a huge coloured burst that would no doubt impress his friends and family.
Dickey's group headed out to the foothills of the Santa Rita mountains for the main event
of the party - this, despite the fact that a fire watch had been issued covering the area.
A fire watch is a warning given by the National Weather Service when the conditions exist for
wildfires to spread out of control very rapidly. Predictably, this is exactly what happened.
Dickey's group placed the decorated box of Tannerite near some long grass,
retreated to a safe distance, and set off the explosives with a single shot. Blue powder
burst into the air. Any joy the group felt, however, was short-lived. The explosion
also ignited the long grass, and within seconds the fire was out of control.
For what it's worth, Dickey called for assistance immediately and made no attempt to hide what
he'd done. Firefighters attended but were unable to immediately contain the blaze.
It spread, burning 190 square kilometers (or 73 square miles) of state and Forest Service land.
Two weeks of intense efforts were required to bring it under control,
with costs topping out at around eight million dollars. 200 people were forced
to flee their homes, although fortunately no deaths were attributed directly to the fire.
Dickey, who was hugely remorseful for his actions, escaped prison - though he
was handed five years of probation and an order to make monthly restitution payments
for 20 years. When the child for whom the party was held becomes a legal adult,
his father will still be paying off the cost of his gender reveal party.
Another incident on the 7th of September, 2019, also resulted in a great deal of destruction,
but no deaths. An expectant couple in the city of Turkey, in Texas, hired a small crop-dusting plane
to dump 350 gallons of pink water over a field for their gender reveal party.
No sooner had it done so, however, than the plane got into difficulties,
rapidly losing speed. The aircraft ultimately stalled and crashed to the ground. One of
the two people on board was injured, but both survived. The plane, however, was a write-off.
Just one month later, however, on the 26th of October, 2019, a gender reveal party in Knoxville,
Iowa, would result in a tragic fatality. The Kreimeyer family wanted to reveal
the gender of their expected child with a bang. After experimenting with different
explosives they settled on a mix of gunpowder and coloured baby powder,
which they poured into a metal tube welded to a metal base. When ignited by a fuse, they expected
that the explosion would be funneled upwards by the tube, creating a spectacular coloured cloud.
However, before setting off the homemade device a cover was added and taped into place,
creating what was essentially a pipe bomb. Rather than simply blasting the powder up into the air,
the whole thing exploded violently, sending shrapnel flying towards guests.
56-year-old Pamela Kreimeyer - who was due to become a grandmother when
the child was born - was hit and instantly killed.
These incidents, whilst horrendous for those involved, seemingly only fueled the levels of
interest in gender reveal parties. The phenomenon was more popular than ever when, on the 5th of
September, 2020, a small family group threw the most destructive gender reveal party in history.
El Dorado Ranch Park sits just outside the city of Yucaipa
with suburbs on one side and open countryside and mountains on the other. It's a popular spot with
hikers, who make use of a network of unsignposted but maintained trails which criss-cross the park.
Unreleased CCTV footage from the morning when the disaster began shows a group comprised of adults
and children arriving at the edge of the park, and setting off a coloured smoke bomb on the ground.
Just minutes later flames engulfed the area,
spreading rapidly despite the family's efforts to bring them under control with water.
Neither they nor the firefighters who were swiftly called to the scene
were able to control the blaze, which spread easily through the bone-dry grass and foliage.
The fire spread up into the hills and engulfed nearby communities.
Over the course of the ensuing weekend hundreds of people had to be evacuated,
and firefighters worked around the clock to try and contain the spread.
It was an intense battle. The fire would not be fully contained until the 10th of October, and
would not be fully extinguished until the 16th of November, more than a month after it first began.
By that time almost 23,000 acres of land had been burned, ten buildings had been razed to
the ground, including four homes, thousands of people had been forced to evacuate,
a dozen people had been injured and, worst of all, a USDA Forest Service firefighter was killed
while working to contain the flames. His name was Charles Edward Morton. He was 39 years old
and was known by friends and colleagues as a dedicated firefighter who loved his job.
Legal proceedings have not yet been brought against the family who started the fire -
indeed the full cost of the damage is still being counted. The El Dorado Ranch fire is at present
the most destructive event to result from a gender reveal party... but given the continued popularity
of big, dramatic, social media-oriented reveals there's every chance that it may not be the last.
There's an epilogue to this anthology of disastrous gender reveals.
Jenna Karvunidis, the blogger and journalist who first popularized the idea, has publicly
stated that she regrets doing so, and not just because of the wildfires and the freak accidents.
Nowadays she just doesn't think that the gender of an unborn child is that important. Indeed,
the child for whom she held her original party has grown up to show very little interest in
conforming to gender stereotypes. Perhaps instead of ever more elaborate gender reveals, Karvunidis
suggests, parents might celebrate something else: the choosing of a child's name, for example.
And, while they're at it, they might wish to follow her original example.
In many cases where a gender reveal stunt has gone wrong,
a simple cake and a gathering with close friends and family might have been a much better choice.