\n\t\t\t\t\t\tTop Yolo County officials are disputing a civil grand jury report that said they were aware of illegal fireworks operations at the site of the deadly 2025 Esparto explosions. In March 2026, the Yolo County Civil Grand Jury released a scathing 32-page report that claims Yolo County officials knew about the operations for at least three years but “no code enforcement occurred” and that there was a lack of oversight directly led to “death and destruction.” The Civil Grand Jury is an independent body of citizen volunteers who are appointed to provide oversight of local government operations. On Monday, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors released a 20-page response to the grand jury report. Officials claim the grand jury report was released before “critical facts became available.” “The board will not accept findings about the motives of County staff or the Board that rest on speculation,” the response said. The response from officials is preliminary and could change during the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday morning. KCRA is still going through the response. Read the full response here. In the response, officials claim the report gives “insufficient weight” to distinct responsibilities of local, state, and federal agencies. Officials add that evidence described in the report does not support claims that county staff chose not to act following a site visit on June 2, 2022. “The title declares that officials ‘knew’ and that ‘none acted,’ assigning blame before the analysis begins,” the response reads. “Yet the Report later acknowledges that the Grand Jury \u201ccould not determine definitively\u201d why County staff did not pursue matters at the Esparto property further in 2022.”A massive explosion happened on July 1, 2025, destroying a facility that was storing fireworks and killing seven workers from Devastating Pyrotechnics. Eight people were indicted in connection with the tragedy. Five of those arrested face murder charges: Kenneth Chee, Jack Lee, Gary Chan, Douglas Michael Tollefsen, and Samuel Machado. See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\tYOLO COUNTY, Calif. \u2014 \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Top Yolo County officials are disputing a civil grand jury report that said they were aware of illegal fireworks operations at the site of the deadly 2025 Esparto explosions. <\/p>\n
In March 2026, the Yolo County Civil Grand Jury released a scathing 32-page report<\/a> that claims Yolo County officials knew about the operations for at least three years but “no code enforcement occurred” and that there was a lack of oversight directly led to “death and destruction.” <\/p>\n The Civil Grand Jury is an independent body of citizen volunteers who are appointed to provide oversight of local government operations. <\/p>\n On Monday, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors released a 20-page response to the grand jury report. Officials claim the grand jury report was released before “critical facts became available.” <\/p>\n “The board will not accept findings about the motives of County staff or the Board that rest on speculation,” the response said. <\/p>\n The response from officials is preliminary and could change during the Board of Supervisors meeting on Tuesday morning. KCRA is still going through the response. <\/p>\n Read the full response here. <\/a><\/p>\n In the response, officials claim the report gives “insufficient weight” to distinct responsibilities of local, state, and federal agencies. Officials add that evidence described in the report does not support claims that county staff chose not to act following a site visit on June 2, 2022. <\/p>\n “The title declares that officials ‘knew’ and that ‘none acted,’ assigning blame before the analysis begins,” the response reads. “Yet the Report later acknowledges that the Grand Jury \u201ccould not determine definitively\u201d why County staff did not pursue matters at the Esparto property further in 2022.”<\/p>\n A massive explosion happened on July 1, 2025, destroying a facility that was storing fireworks and killing seven workers from Devastating Pyrotechnics. Eight people were indicted in connection with the tragedy. <\/p>\n Five of those arrested face murder charges: Kenneth Chee, Jack Lee, Gary Chan, Douglas Michael Tollefsen, and Samuel Machado. <\/p>\n See more coverage of top California stories here<\/a> | Download our app<\/a> | Subscribe to our morning newsletter<\/a> | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Top Yolo County officials are disputing a civil grand jury report that said they were aware of illegal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":720423,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[310020,18290,4511,4,450,310021,31295,310024,18276,209732,310023,243804,451,310022,310019,167999,253421,3,9585,16598,125277,12277,44280,452,453,200697,243807],"class_list":["post-720422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-20-page-response","tag-board","tag-board-of-supervisors","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-county-staff","tag-dispute","tag-douglas-michael-tollefsen","tag-download","tag-esparto","tag-gary-chan","tag-grand-jury-report","tag-headlines","tag-illegal-firework-operation-esparto","tag-illegal-fireworks","tag-jack-lee","tag-kenneth-chee","tag-news","tag-official","tag-operation","tag-oversight","tag-site","tag-supervisors","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-yolo-county","tag-yolo-county-official"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=720422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/720422\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/720423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=720422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=720422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=720422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}