This week, more than 7,000 acres in California were burned after a gender reveal party led to a massive wildfire in San Bernardino County.
Blogger Jenna Karvunidis, who is widely credited for creating the gender reveal party, took to Facebook to condemn such events.
“Stop having these stupid parties. For the love of God, stop burning things down to tell everyone about your kid’s penis. No one cares but you,” Karvunidis wrote.
This is not the first time a gender reveal party has led to catastrophe, and yet the events have only grown in popularity.
Back in 2008, Karvunidis had her own gender reveal party before they became a thing. She and her husband went what is now the more traditional route, though: cutting a cake that revealed an inside of pink frosting. A girl.
“I just thought it would be really fun for everybody in the whole family to find out,” Karvunidis told NPR last year.
She wrote about the gender reveal on her blog, High Gloss And Sauce, and at the time it gathered some local attention.
However, these celebrations of life have turned into risky efforts. While many still go for the classic blue or pink cake reveal, others have taken more extreme directions.
The current wildfire in California is gigantic, but the casualty is smaller compared to a 2017 reveal in Arizona that led to a wildfire spanning 47,000 acres. It all happened when members at the party shot a makeshift target scrawled with the words “Boy” and “Girl.”
When the target exploded, a blue cloud exploded upward and immediately ignited the surrounding brush. It was a boy, and the party ended up costing the guilty patrons more than $8 million in restitution.
Just this April, according to fire officials, a gender reveal party in Florida also led to a 10-acre brush fire, after similarly using “Tannerite and a weapon” in the reveal.
If the damage done by huge wildfires isn’t enough, such gender reveal parties have also led to property damage (like the plane crash last year in Texas, or the car that burst into flames in Australia).
Ironically, this celebration of life can lead to death and casualties.