Three Companies Pay Over $4 Million to Settle El Dorado Fire Lawsuit
An Ohio smoke bomb designer, an importer, and a retailer agreed to pay the United States more than $4 million for costs and damages from the 2020 El Dorado Fire sparked by a gender reveal device. The settlement resolves a federal lawsuit tied to a blaze that burned nearly 23,000 acres in the Inland Empire and killed one firefighter.
usatoday.comThree companies will pay the federal government more than $4 million to resolve a civil lawsuit over the El Dorado Fire, which began during a gender reveal photo shoot in Southern California in 2020.
The settlement covers an Ohio-based smoke bomb designer and importer plus two other firms. The companies admitted no liability but agreed to the payment for firefighting costs, resource damages, and related expenses, per a Justice Department announcement released June 2, 2026.
The fire ignited on Sept. 5, 2020, when a smoke-generating pyrotechnic device used in the gender reveal exploded and set dry vegetation ablaze in the Inland Empire. It ultimately burned 22,744 acres, destroyed multiple structures, and caused the death of firefighter Charles Morton of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The U.S. Forest Service and other agencies incurred millions in suppression and rehabilitation costs.
The agreement shifts the financial burden from taxpayers to the commercial suppliers of the device. It requires the companies to transfer funds within 30 days of the settlement's finalization. The payment closes the civil case filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California; no criminal charges against the companies are referenced in the settlement.
Downstream, the resolution frees Forest Service and Justice Department resources previously dedicated to litigation. It also establishes a concrete recovery amount for the incident, which can inform actuarial models used by federal land-management agencies when calculating expected cost recovery from future human-caused fires on public land.
Federal prosecutors in the Central District of California handled the case under standard tort authority for damages to federal resources.
This settlement is the federal government's formal financial conclusion to the El Dorado Fire litigation. The blaze was one of several high-profile wildfires in California in 2020 that together burned more than 4 million acres statewide, according to contemporaneous state and federal fire records.
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