BAKERSFIELD, CA - Many people are paying the price for their holiday weekend. Firefighters wrote dozens of tickets for illegal fireworks. And now, investigators are looking for the person who shot one off and caught a Bakersfield family's home on fire.
The fire started the night of the Fourth of July on Appleton Street in southwest Bakersfield. Marleen Patt caught the flames shooting from the roof on her cell phone camera.
"I mean, like that quick there was just flames everywhere and it just went," said Patt. "There were still illegal fireworks being shot off from over that way, so I don't know. The firefighters were here just looking over and just, wow, you know."
On Monday, the $225,000 in damage was visible. A restoration team was at the house. They will fix the house for the husband and wife who escaped the fire, but lost so much.
"They are just upset. Obviously, they are really angry at whoever set off the fireworks that caught the roof on fire," said Mark Denny with Belfor Property Restoration.
"This particular mortar was recovered from the rear yard of the Appleton Street fire," said Battalion Chief Danny Brown with the Bakersfield Fire Department. "This falls from the sky, lands on a wood shake roof."
Brown says in all, fireworks started 31 fires on the Fourth. They caused $279,000 in damage. There were more than 750 calls to the fireworks hotline. In Bakersfield, firefighters cited 47 people for illegal fireworks. The penalty is $1,500 each.
In the county, officials say 75 to 80 citations were issued.
"The amount of fireworks that we saw going up and the fires that we saw as a result of the illegal fireworks this year is substantially higher. People don't tend to look downstream as to what the possible effects of shooting off these aerials can be, and unfortunately it was illustrated graphically," said Battalion Chief Brown. "When it's costing people homes I think we seriously need to look at where we are going as a society."
The Bakersfield Fire Department and Kern County Fire Department each confiscated a little over 700 pounds of illegal fireworks and said one person burned themselves with fireworks in the city.
If investigators catch the person who set off the firework that caused the house fire, that person could face a felony arson charge.