Targeted tactics: Northern Santa Barbara County cities try to get a handle on illegal fireworks in the sky and on the ground

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Whether the risk of being fined $1,000 discourages illegal fireworks use in Guadalupe or not, two longtime residents said they’re hoping to make the city feel like less of a “warzone” when July 4 rolls around by targeting offenders’ hearts rather than their wallets.

“We sort of went with the approach that we appeal to the compassion of those who are doing this rather than confront them and say, you know, ‘Stop doing this,’” local graphic designer Deborah Sykes told the Sun.

During the summer of 2024, Sykes teamed up with fellow Guadalupe resident Tish Harris to create a series of social media posts centered on images of crying infants, dogs peeking out from under blankets, and other distressed subjects.

One of them contains a poem Sykes wrote with stanzas about firework screeches strong enough to drown out “a baby’s cry,” mothers cradling their frightened children, and four-legged family members that “hide in fear” each Independence Day.

Both Sykes and Harris are pet owners. The duo’s informal meetings to discuss ongoing efforts of the Guadalupe Illegal Firework Team (GIFT)—of which they’re the two sole members—often double as dog walks.

The group’s tagline is: “the gift of quiet.” Less than a year after launching its social media campaign, GIFT gained attention from elected officials. In February, the Guadalupe City Council agreed to attach printed flyers from the group in residents’ utility bills twice this year ahead of the Fourth.

City staff initially advised against pairing the flyers with utility bills, partly to avoid setting a precedent for other groups to consider future bills as a “public forum” route. But the council took GIFT’s stance with a 5-0 vote. It’s among the newest tactics cities in northern Santa Barbara County are using to tackle illegal firework activities this year.

 “A lot of people enjoy fireworks, and we get that. We don’t want to be [known as] the old ladies in the community who want to take away all the fun that everybody’s trying to have,” Harris said with a laugh. “What we don’t want to do is create conflict or be aggressive toward our community members in any way over this. It’s not worth it.”

GIFT’s city-approved illegal fireworks awareness flyers were mailed out with utility bills once in spring and again earlier this summer. The spring inclusion was crucial, Sykes said, because GIFT’s goal with the proposal was to raise awareness about illegal fireworks ahead of as many potential purchases as possible.

In response to GIFT’s activity, some people wrongly assume that the group wants to “eliminate fireworks entirely,” Sykes said.

 “We don’t. … We’re not opposed to ‘safe and sane’ fireworks,” she said. “Legal fireworks are a fundraiser for a lot of groups.”

Sykes said that one of the reasons she and Harris formed GIFT in September 2024 was to try to prevent a repeat of their Independence Day experiences that year.

 “This last year was the absolute worst in my memory,” said Sykes, who’s lived in Guadalupe for more than three decades. “It’s been a problem since we moved here, but it’s gotten worse.”

According to the Guadalupe Police Department, the illegal fireworks citations issued across the city on July 4, 2024, totaled 15, more than double the previous year’s seven. The department reported eight on the holiday in 2022, and nine in 2021.

 “We’ll see how this Fourth of July goes, but we’re getting to the point where we might start the next phase of this,” Harris told the Sun. “When [Sykes and I] first started talking, we thought we could go to schools and educate kids … about the effects that fireworks have on wildlife and people with PTSD.

 “But we wanted to build a little momentum before we started asking [schools] to come and present,” she added.

While 2025 marked Guadalupe’s first printed flyer collaboration with GIFT, the city of Lompoc is embarking on a new partnership with a non-city entity of its own this July to assist with illegal fireworks enforcement.

Headquartered in one of the Santa Maria Airport’s corporate hangars, Overwatch Aero specializes in providing unmanned aircrafts to agencies across the country for various data collection tasks.

Established in 2018, the company has been employed by a handful of cities in California and Oregon to pinpoint illegal fireworks activity during Fourth of July patrols, CEO and co-founder Jordan Hahn told the Sun. 

At a Lompoc City Council meeting in February, some officials referred to the city’s new service agreement with Overwatch as partnering with a drone service. Although they’re unmanned, Overwatch’s aircrafts differ from traditional drones in size and flight capabilities, Hahn explained.

 “[These] aren’t your standard ‘hey I went to Best Buy and bought a quadcopter’ type of drones,” he said. “Those are fun, don’t get me wrong. I love playing around with those smaller drones.”

Overwatch’s aircrafts, also known as unmanned aerial vehicles, can fly up to about 6,000 feet in the air. Size-wise, they’re 10 feet long with a 16-foot wingspan, Hahn said. Weight-wise, they’re about 150 pounds, while most recreational drones aren’t heavier than 10, he added.

Accustomed to working some late-night fireworks monitoring shifts over the past few years, Hahn said that some people associate this kind of work as “raining on someone’s parade,” but don’t always realize it could help prevent a wildfire.

Last summer, Lompoc Fire Chief Brian Fallon told the City Council that “a rogue firework” caused a fire in the Lompoc foothills on July 4.

 “It was a resource hog,” Fallon told the council. “It pulled all of our Lompoc resources to that area.”

Overwatch CEO Hahn said that the company “in general takes a lot of pride in being able to help our first responders.”

 “They’re doing the dangerous and dirty work, and it’s our job to get them the data they need to make their jobs safer,” Hahn said. “We’re just proud to be able to help.”

Reach Senior Staff Writer Caleb Wiseblood at cwiseblood@santamariasun.com.

This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 6, 2025.