A Southern California TikToker caught a group of careless idiots launching lantern balloons with lit candles into the sky near a nature preserve — even as wildfires incinerated Los Angeles.The woman — who spoke to The Post anonymously after her employer told to take down her video — said she made a trip to a beach near Santa Barbara to decompress after working with fire victims in Los Angeles.What she saw next left her dumbstruck: A group of partiers launching “sky lanterns” a stone’s throw from a campground, nature preserves and a residential neighborhood in a county with a “high” fire risk designation.
“I was watching them just light these lanterns and putting them into the air. They just kept launching more and more,” she told The Post.Sky lanterns can reach altitudes of 1,500 feet and have been known to crash-land on forests and rooftops, starting blazes .
As a result, they are illegal in dozens of states — including California.When the TikToker saw one of the airborne fireballs drift in the direction of the nearby mountains, she decided enough was enough.She and another concerned bystander whipped out their phone cameras and confronted the party, who insisted that the lanterns were safe because “it’s not windy” and claimed to have a “permit” for the illegal lanterns, a video shows.“Have you even gone down to LA? Do you even know what’s happening?” the enraged TikToker fired back.In the video, she can be heard explaining to the firebugs that she has been working with victims of the wildfires that have destroyed thousands of homes and forced hundreds of thousands to evacuate.“The man who was confronting them with me, I didn’t get his name, but he told me he and his family were displaced from LA. He said, ‘We’re sheltering up here. And now we see this?’” she recalled.
Eventually, someone in the group claimed the lanterns were part of a memorial service.
“I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ve been going down to LA, I’ve been seeing the devastation, and I don’t want to start a fire here,’” said the woman, who lives in Santa Barbara.
When the party grew more belligerent, the TikToker backed off and called 911. Eventually, local authorities arrived and shut the lantern-launching down.
But the experience left her rattled.
“Just seeing this, and knowing what’s happening in LA, physically going down there, it absolutely devastated me to see a lot of it burning it to the ground,” she said. “I thought I would be safe up here, but now I don’t feel safe at all.”
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