Some will always slip through — and hopefully they don't cause wildfires. But the police departments in San Jose and San Francisco are publicizing news of recent busts involving big caches of illegal fireworks.

San Francisco police say that Thursday night, in the Bayview, they pulled over an allegedly stolen U-Haul van being driven by 38-year-old Joe Jenkins of San Francisco. Inside they found "hundreds of illegal fireworks, including various rockets and barrel bombs," and Jenkins has now been arrested on suspicion of multiple felonies, including receiving a stolen vehicle, driving or taking a vehicle without consent, illegal possession of explosives, and possession of a large number of fireworks.

The department says that Jenkins's alleged fireworks haul included "especially dangerous examples, including 'ground to sky' fireworks and barrel bombs, which can cause serious bodily injuries and death to members of the public."

"I want to thank our officers for taking these extremely dangerous explosives off our streets," said interim SFPD Chief Paul Yep in a statement. “This large cache of fireworks could have caused untold destruction in our city."

Yep added, "Every year, fireworks lead to serious injuries, fires, and other critical incidents that our officers routinely respond to."

Down in San Jose, police made an even larger bust, serving a search warrant at a storage unit last week that turned up 1,320 pounds of fireworks. As KRON4 reports, via the SJPD, police executed the search warrant on June 16 at a storage facility on the 200 block of West Capitol Expressway.

At the scene they detained 26-year-old Javier Martinez, who was arrested on suspicion of illegal fireworks possession.

A separate investigation led to another search warrant on June 23, on the 200 block of San Antonio Court, which yielded a stash of 730 pounds of illegal fireworks, and the arrest of 31-year-old David Benito-Carbajal. Information from that search led to a second location on the 2700 block of Tanglewood Drive where another 1,350 pounds of fireworks and IEDs were seized. 52-year-old Juan Rocha was arrested at that scene.

In total, San Jose police say they took 3,400 pounds of fireworks off the streets.

"Independence Day doesn’t give anyone the freedom to put others in harm’s way," San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in a statement. "I want to thank our Police Department for proactively seizing thousands of pounds of illegal fireworks to help ensure everyone can celebrate safely next week."

Photo via SFPD