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 burned Los Angeles.
The woman — who spoke to The Post anonymously after deleting the video — said she took a trip to a beach near Santa Barbara to decompress after working with fire victims in Los Angeles.
What she saw next stunned her: a group of partygoers launching “sky lanterns” just steps from a campsite, nature reserves and a residential area in a province with a “high” fire risk.
“I saw them lighting these lanterns and raising them in the air. They kept launching more and more,” she told The Post.
Sky lanterns can reach heights of 1,500 feet and have been known to crash-land on forests and rooftops, causing fires.
As a result, they are illegal in dozens of states, including California.
When the TikToker saw one of the fireballs floating in the sky toward the nearby mountains, she decided enough was enough.
She and another concerned bystander took out their phone cameras and confronted the party, who insisted the lanterns were safe because “it’s not windy” and claimed to have a “permit” for the illegal lanterns, a video shows .
“Did you even go to LA? Do you even know what’s happening?” the irate TikToker fired back.
In the video, you can hear her explain to the firebugs that she has been working with victims of the wildfires that have destroyed thousands of homes and forced more than 100,000 people to evacuate.
“The man who confronted them with me, I didn’t know his name, but he told me that he and his family had been driven out of LA. He said, ‘We’re taking shelter here. And now we see this?” she recalled.
Eventually, someone in the group claimed that the lanterns were part of a memorial service.
“I was like, ‘I’m so sorry, but I’ve been to LA, I’ve seen the destruction and I don’t want to start a fire here,’” said the woman, who lives in Santa Barbara.
As the party became more belligerent, the TikToker retreated and called 911. Eventually, local authorities arrived and stopped the lantern launch.
But the experience left her unsettled.
“Just seeing this and knowing what’s happening in LA, physically going there, it was absolutely devastating to see so much of it burned to the ground,” she said. “I thought I would be safe here, but now I don’t feel safe at all.”
