Rogue wave slams into Southern California beachgoers; 9 hospitalized

Vivian Chow

KTLA
Thu, December 28, 2023 

Video captured the terrifying moment beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura on Thursday.

The incident happened as locals were being warned about a massive swell pounding the Southern California coastline this week.

The rogue wave submerged bystanders at Pierpont Beach on Seaward Avenue around 11 a.m. That area has been hit the hardest with what the National Weather Service called “tremendous wave energy.”

A witness, Colin Hoag, captured cell phone video of the explosive wave. As the waters suddenly flooded an observation zone, both people and vehicles were instantly swept away.

Beachgoers were seen frantically running for their lives. The raging waters destroyed the windows of nearby beachfront buildings and hotels on its destructive path.

Video captured the moment beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura County on Dec. 28, 2023, sending nine people to the hospital. (Colin Hoag)


Video captured the moment beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura County on Dec. 28, 2023, sending nine people to the hospital. (Colin Hoag)


Video captured the moment beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura County on Dec. 28, 2023, sending nine people to the hospital. (Ventura Police Department)


Video captured the moment beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura County on Dec. 28, 2023, sending nine people to the hospital. (Ventura Police Department)


Video captured the moment beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura County on Dec. 28, 2023, sending nine people to the hospital. (Colin Hoag)


Video captured the moment beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura County on Dec. 28, 2023, sending nine people to the hospital. (Duke’s Ventura)


Video captured the moment beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura County on Dec. 28, 2023, sending nine people to the hospital.


Video captured the moments of calm before beachgoers were slammed into by a massive rogue wave in Ventura County on Dec. 28, 2023, sending nine people to the hospital. (Colin Hoag)

Nine people were rushed to the hospital by paramedics. Witnesses said several victims suffered broken bones. Two of the victims remain in critical condition on Thursday night.

“It was horrific,” Hoag recalled. ‘There was a lot of screaming, a lot of yelling. I didn’t know how far [the wave] would go. I thought, ‘This is a tsunami, is what it looks like to me.’”

“I think a lot of lessons were learned today when you look at that video,” said Andy VanSciver from the Ventura County Fire Department. “The importance of heeding the warnings, about giving the ocean some respect.”

Warnings of dangerous high surf and flooding are highest for Ventura County along with Hermosa, Manhattan and Palos Verdes beaches, according to the NWS.

Waves of 10 to 15 feet with sets to 20 feet are expected along the Ventura County coast. A high surf warning and coastal flood warning are in effect from 4 a.m. Thursday to 10 p.m. Saturday.

Despite the warnings, visitors kept hanging out at the beach and entering the ocean, authorities said. When emergency personnel weren’t dealing with people on land, they were rescuing surfers and swimmers who had unsuccessfully tried to challenge the dangerous waves.

“We ask people to stay out [of the water] because it puts rescuers in harm’s way as well,” explained Capt. Brian McGrath with Ventura County Fire. “The sea, it’s unforgiving and we know what to expect.”

Throughout the week, meteorologists warned communities along the central and Southern California coast about the impending dangers — monster waves, life-threatening rip currents, damaging coastal flooding and significant beach erosion.

The high surf will stick around through late Saturday night as locals begin recovering and rebuilding the damaged beachfront businesses in Ventura.

County firefighters will be patrolling the beaches often over the next few days. Crews will be building a 6 to 8-foot high sand berm stretching a mile long to help protect the beach.

All Ventura County beaches and the Ventura Pier will remain closed at this time.

Public safety officials are asking the public to stay out of the water and maintain a safe distance from the shoreline, especially after the destruction caused by the rogue wave.

 

Huge waves damage homes, cause injuries along California coast

Karen Garcia, Ashley Ahn, Christian Martinez

Los Angeles Times
Thu, December 28, 2023 

Men watch from a balcony in Faria Beach as huge waves crash on the shore in Ventura. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)


California’s first huge swells of the winter are wreaking havoc on the state’s coastline as an incoming atmospheric river storm forces evacuations amid flooding of beach and coastal roads.

The extreme weather has been blamed for several injuries, ocean rescues, flooding and evacuation orders at coastal cities through the state. Ventura County was particularly hard hit.

In Ventura County, waves of up to 12 feet have already been reported, and the Central Coast has seen 18- to 20-foot swells, said Mike Wofford with the National Weather Service's Oxnard office.


High surf advisories remained in effect throughout Ventura County on Thursday, with local officials imploring the community to stay away from the water as multiple rescues were conducted in the morning.

Eight people sustained minor to moderate injuries and were taken to the hospital after large waves caused flooding near South Seaward Avenue at approximately 10:50 a.m. Thursday, Ventura County Fire Department Captain Brian McGrath said.

Of the injured, some were located in the Inn On The Beach, a boutique hotel located on the beach now closed due to flooding, he said.

The Ventura County Fire Department also rescued at least 15 people out of the ocean Thursday morning during high tide, McGrath added. None sustained injuries, he said.

At the Inn on the Beach, located on Seaward Avenue, things were messy.

The floor of the lobby was covered in mud and sand. The carpet squished with water as Jay Williams, the manager, walked across it.

At around 10:45 a.m., a rogue wave had slammed into the hotel, flooding rooms with nearly 2 feet of water.

The force of the wave smashed glass that has been on the patios of rooms facing the ocean.

The wall of water tossed furniture to and fro. Desks and beds and dressers stood at odd angles inside rooms, covered in mud.

Luckily no guests were injured, although some were stuck in their rooms for a short time.

Around 45 guests were evacuated from the hotel, which will have to close for an unknown amount of time.

“The beach had a lot of looky loos out here,” Williams said. Before the wave hit the hotel, the scene outside was joyful. “There was a couple smaller bigger waves that came in, washed a railroad tie out in the street here. Kids were giggling.”

But once waves began reaching the street, the situation changed. One wave that washed onto Seaward dragged a man a short distance down the street. And people became trapped near their cars.

All beaches in Ventura County are closed until further notice, McGrath said.

The closure extended to Faria Beach Campground, which sustained damages from the waves.

“Riprap rocks were thrown into the middle of the roadway, gravel and mud are everywhere, picnic tables and fire rings were tossed to the other side of the park and extensive flooding” occurred, according to county officials.

Evacuation orders were issued for parts of Marin County, and residents were ordered to evacuate to Stinson Beach Community Center.

Santa Cruz County issued an evacuation warning Thursday on X, formerly known as Twitter, for coastal areas near Seacliff State Beach because of flooding.

Within the evacuation area, the tourist hot spot known as the Rio del Mar Esplanade is currently flooded with several inches of stormwater. On X, the California Highway Patrol cautions that residents avoid the area and not attempt to drive across or through.

Sand, water and foam inundated Pittsfield Lane after a seawall and sand berm was breached in Ventura. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)

According to the National Weather Service’s coastal flood warning for the Bay Area, large breaking waves are causing significant flooding of beach and coastal roads. The waves are depositing large amounts of debris and causing road closures.

In Monterey County, park rangers closed Point Lobos State Natural Reserve on Thursday, saying high surf was washing into trails and rendering the entire park unsafe. The closure sent caravans of tourists heading south on Highway 1 to safer places further down the coast. Bluffs that were normally sparsely populated were bursting with tourists, watching as waves crashed 10 and 20 feet over rocks just off shore.

In the nearby city of Carmel, highway patrol and police cars blocked a section of the shoreline drive from traffic because of waves crashing up the beach and onto the shore. Dozens of people stood on a hilly neighborhood in Carmel Point, trying to capture photos of the giant waves, which were smashing into houses and crashing up beach staircases.

Despite the warnings from authorities, the extreme weather and massive waves have drawn surfers to the water and onlookers to the shores.

Pierpont neighbors help shovel sand on Bath Lane to help water drain after a seawall and sand berm were breached by high surf in Ventura. (Richard Vogel/Associated Press)

Just north of the town Half Moon Bay, on the coast between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, the surf break known as Mavericks hosts some of the largest waves in the U.S. and attracts big-wave surfers from around the world.

More than a dozen surfers were spotted catching the waves at Mavericks Thursday morning, with thousands of spectators gathered at the cliffs to watch, said Tina Lourenco, who works at Old Princeton Landing — a popular restaurant and bar for locals and surfers in Half Moon Bay.

“There’s a ton of people right now. You can’t even park in the area,” she said. “Lots of families are coming down. It’s really exciting.”

She estimates about 10 jet skis were also on the waters to aid the surfers. Old Princeton Landing, just a short walk from the water, has also seen an uptick in customers in the past several days, Lourenco said.

“The vibe here is definitely insane, a lot of energy and excitement, and we’ll definitely get some of the surfers in here at the end of the day,” she said.

Brian Overfelt, Old Princeton Landing owner and former surfer, has lived in Half Moon Bay for nearly 50 years and oversaw the nation’s premier big wave surf event, Titans of Mavericks, as a board member until the contest was canceled in 2017. He’s seen it all, but called Thursday’s conditions at Half Moon Bay "gnarly and dangerous."

“Somebody could die at any moment,” he said. “The waves are so big out there that it’s unruly.”

Pierpont resident Ted Teetsel shovels sand out of neighbor Linda Fisher's garage on Greenock Lane after the area was flooded. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

Waves at Mavericks reached about 50 to 60 feet Thursday afternoon, he said. It’s the kind of waves that big-wave surfers travel the world for, but Overfelt said the rain and south winds make the waves choppier and more dangerous for surfers.

In conditions such as these, everyone in the water, including surfers and those on jet skis, should be fully trained in water rescue, Overfelt said.

“If you’re a photographer on a jet ski and you don’t have rescue equipment, you really should not be out there,” he said. “Anyone out there should be ready and trained to do full rescue, no matter what you’re doing.”

Despite the unruly conditions, the atmosphere at Half Moon Bay and the surfing community this week is one of excitement.

“This is what they live for,” he said. “Kids are calling for boat rides. People are calling to borrow my jet skis. The energy is in the air.”

The National Weather Service office in Monterey Bay encouraged beachgoers to stay out and away from the water.

"These conditions are very dangerous, I would go so far as to say they're deadly on the coast," said NWS meteorologist Alexis Clouser.

Visitors to the shores should keep a "healthy distance" from the water and stay off rocks, piers and jetties because if a wave washes up it has the potential to sweep a person out into the ocean, she said.

"If you do happen to see [a person] in the water or let's say a dog, don't go into the water after them. Call 9-1-1 and wait for a professional," Clouser said.

The streets are flooded in Capitola on Dec. 28 as powerful surf is rolling onto beaches on the West Coast (Nic Coury / AP)

The high surf in Northern California isn't unusual for this time of year, meteorologists say.

In January, a series of atmospheric river storms caused high surf and flooding that left beaches in shambles and destroyed sections of piers in the seaside town of Capitola and in Seacliff.

During the current storm, the San Francisco Bay Area coast could see waves up to 40 feet in some locations. The National Weather Service issued a warning for residents to stay away from rocks, jetties, piers and other waterside infrastructure.

In Southern California, the waves aren't expected to be as big, but high surf is expected through Saturday, meteorologists say.

A high surf advisory went into affect at 4 a.m. Thursday for Point Conception in Santa Barbara County and Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Palos Verdes Peninsula beaches in Los Angeles County, all of which can expect sets of 15- to 20-foot waves and dangerous rip currents.

Read more: Another storm is coming to Southern California. Could it rain on the Rose Parade?

"We're expecting the highest waves today to be arriving either late morning or early afternoon and then, maybe some drops in height tomorrow, but still well above normal," Wofford said.

The waves will pick back up Saturday when another surge of higher swells arrives.

A surfer rides a wave at Surfer's Point on Thursday in Ventura. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)

There have been really strong storms over the Pacific Ocean that "we don't necessarily see because they move up to the north or go in some other direction," Wofford said.

While the storms are moving through, strong winds can form big waves, which "propagate out along, and the waves just come barreling right in," he said.

The ingredients for high walls of water include strong wind, time and distance.

Clouser said strong winds that blow for a long time over the ocean surface generates a swell. When the winds continue to strengthen, the swell gets larger as it approaches the coastline and into the beach.

"If you have, for example, a really steep sloped beach, you're going to have higher waves heights that break [going] up the coast," she said.

A recent study found that the extreme waves along the California coast are due to climate change, and an increase in ocean temperatures, which is resulting in "climate-induced heightened wave activity."

Along with the high surf advisory for the Los Angeles-area beaches, the National Weather Service issued a coastal flood advisory through 10 p.m. Saturday.

Surfers wait for a wave in high surf at Manhattan Beach, Calif. on Thursday, Dec. 28, 2023. (Richard Vogel/Associated Press)

Read more: Did you just get a flood warning? Here’s how to check your flood risk

Although no structural or road damage is expected, there is an increased risk for drowning, the agency warned. Rip currents can pull swimmers and surfers out to sea, and large breaking waves can cause injuries, wash people off beaches or rocks and capsize small boats.

"Never turn your back to the ocean," said the National Weather Service on X.

Staff writer Jessica Garrison contributed to this story

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

FACTORY FARMING

In Texas, nearly 18,000 cows died in a single barn fire. This is how it happened

Rick Jervis, USA TODAY
Updated Wed, December 27, 2023 

View of half-demolished cross-ventilation barn at South Fork Dairy, where fire originated and where most of the cows died. A major fire at the dairy in April 2023 killed nearly 18,000 cows.

LONG READ


This article contains disturbing images.

CASTRO COUNTY, Texas – The aroma of cow manure rode the spring breeze, as it always does in this stretch of Texas panhandle, where the wind lifts an endless fog of microscopic particles that infuse every mile with an earthy scent, the smell of business.

As dusk descended on the South Fork Dairy on April 10, workers busied themselves with the evening shift. Some refilled hay bins. Others checked on pregnant cows or hosed down equipment.

Extracting 24 semi-truck loads of milk from 17,500 cows daily requires a round-the-clock operation, but the crew would not be hindered by the gathering dusk. Much of this farm’s operation was indoors.

The vast barn stood at 2 million square feet, larger than two Amazon fulfillment centers end over end, a footprint almost twice the size of the Pentagon. Even by Texas’ standards, it was considered big.

Cattle pens were aligned in rows and bisected by arrow-straight alleyways, like city blocks whose gutters collected not rain but an endless stream of cow manure. Electronically controlled fans on the east end sucked air across the barn, keeping it cross-ventilated. The wind outside that evening blew at 5 mph, but inside, the fans could move it at 7.

Across this indoor city, thousands of cows lowed lazily. Then the smoke started to rise.

Juan Gutierrez noticed it first. He rode that evening in the cab of a manure vacuum truck in an alley next to Pen 3. The truck was a specialized marvel that kept the pens and alleys clear – the cows could not leave the barn, but their manure could, several times a day. The truck scraped noisily as it sucked manure into its large holding tank, which would later be emptied into a nearby lagoon.

Gutierrez, insulated from the noise inside a sealed cabin, suddenly saw smoke rising from the vehicle’s engine. Then he saw flames licking from the engine compartment. He emerged from the cab and doused the blaze with a fire extinguisher, then a second, but couldn’t stop it.

By the time he and other workers could grab more extinguishers, the fire had leaped to the ceiling, spreading out of control.


Smoke fills the sky at the farm April 10, 2023.

The fire at South Fork Dairy exploded into the single deadliest event involving livestock in Texas history and the deadliest cattle fire in America in at least a decade.

The blaze made it onto news sites across the U.S. and as far away as Russia, China and New Zealand.

The headline was stunning on its face: Nearly 18,000 cows dead in a single blaze.

A Texas State Fire Marshal’s report would later document the events of the day, including the descriptions of the fire Gutierrez saw from the vacuum truck. The official report would be labeled “SENSITIVE” in red, all-capital letters and include photographs of the charred herd.

It would also back up the farm owner’s contentions, blaming the fire on the vacuum truck, classifying the event as “accidental” and concluding, “This case is CLOSED.”

But the fire marshal’s report and the barn’s charred remains underscore three overlapping issues that have yet to be resolved.

The South Fork disaster, according to the report, began with a manure vacuum, the specialized, diesel-powered truck built by a company called Mensch. This piece of farm equipment has no apparent regulation or oversight from farm, transportation or workplace regulators.

A photo from the State Fire Marshal's Office report shows the burnt-out manure vacuum truck.

Second, the record-setting cattle death, while shocking, was part of a clear trend. Farm operations are growing smaller in number but bigger in size, the steady rise of so-called large concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs. Activists say these larger herds have led to ever-larger disasters.

Third is the unseen technology that ties the other two parts together. It merited no mention in the official report, because at South Fork, it had been planned though not yet built. It’s called a biogas digester, a series of covered ponds, sumps and pipes that concentrate animal manure and convert it into natural gas.

This so-called biogas has been touted as a win for the environment. Animal waste that would have been putting off harmful greenhouse gases are converted into a renewable source of energy for truck engines or power plants. But detractors, including some in Congress, worry that public subsidies for this energy source have become an incentive for farms to grow ever larger: a feedback loop that means more cows, more manure and more risk, in any one spot.

And while the scale of the disaster drew widespread attention, that response largely overlooked the toll on the fire’s other victims, the people who worked alongside the cows. Some feared for their family’s farming legacy. Some raced toward the flames with fire extinguishers that couldn’t outdo the flames. One, trapped behind a wall of heat and black smoke, nearly died.

Investigation: 'We don’t seem to learn': 10 years after tragic Texas chemical explosion, risk remains high
A call on Facetime: Fire at the dairy farm

Ezra Linzer, 36, was playing with his 1-year-old son at their home sometime around 7:30 on a Monday evening when a text message buzzed into his phone.

Linzer, 36, helped manage South Fork Dairy and other properties owned by a Texas dairy owner who also was his father-in-law, Eltje Frans Brand.

Brand, 63, had a string of farming properties that stretched to the middle of the state. South Fork was in the panhandle, but Linzer lived with his family in Stephenville, near Fort Worth, nearly 300 miles away.

The text message on April 10 buzzed with urgency. A fire had broken out at the farm.

Ezra Linzer, manager at South Fork Dairy, stands next to some of the dairy's cows.

In all his years managing farms, Linzer thought, there had never been a fire on any of them. He imagined a small hay fire in a remote corner of the property.

Go help put it out, he instructed.

The next text he got was even more perplexing: You don’t understand. The whole thing’s on fire.

His phone buzzed again, this time with an incoming FaceTime call request. The video call lit up the screen.

In the shaky livestream, Linzer saw flames racing through the entirety of the cross-vent barn and thick columns of black smoke pouring out of the structure.

“I wasn’t sure if I was dreaming,” Linzer recalled later.

He left his son, jumped into his truck and raced northwest.

As the Texas sky darkened, a sickening thought turned in Linzer’s mind: the farm that his father-in-law, Brand, had worked his whole life to build, was going up in flames. He gunned the truck harder.

Linzer couldn’t fathom how the fire – something he had imagined as a far-off hay pile – could have started, or grown so large. But the warning might have been parked right outside the barn for months.
***

The April fire was not the first time a manure vacuum truck caught fire at South Fork Dairy. In January, a dairy worker had been releasing captured manure from one of the farm’s other Mensch vacuum trucks into a lagoon on the property when that truck caught fire, according to Brand.

Manure vacuum trucks have been sucking up cattle droppings on farms for decades. But in an industry that regulates almost everything about the safety and purity of its output – milk – there is no apparent data about accidents, injuries or malfunctions of the equipment that manages its other output.

No known federal agency regulates or tracks manure vacuums. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission all confirmed they do not track any information on manure vacuum trucks, even as they compile data on tractor accidents and other farm-related incidents.

Mary Ann Sabo, a spokeswoman for Mensch, said the company has never had a claim for defective equipment that led to a fire and no recalls because of concerns over fire safety in the company’s nearly four decades of existence.

“We have a strong track record of producing safe, reliable and quality equipment for the dairy industry – and we take great pride in making the best quality equipment on the market,” Sabo said.

In 2019, another Mensch manure vacuum truck caught fire on a dairy barn in eastern South Dakota, according to local media reports. No people or livestock were hurt in that fire.

The January fire at South Fork drew no public attention. No one was injured. Farm workers parked the scorched truck east of the barn. They removed some of its tires for reuse. Other than that, they let it sit.

A photo from the Texas State Fire Marshal's Office report shows another Mensch manure vacuum truck parked on the east side of the barn. It caught fire three months before the giant April 2023 fire.

Three months later, Juan Gutierrez climbed into the cab of the farm’s other Mensch vacuum truck. This time, he wasn’t outside at the holding lagoon, but inside the barn.

When fire inspectors interviewed him later, Gutierrez would explain that after he saw the flames, he first tried to drive the truck out of the narrow confines of the alley but couldn’t make it. Another employee, Nicolas Uriate, rushed over with a fire extinguisher, but together they couldn’t quench the fire.

As they examined the April disaster, fire inspectors made their way to the east side of the barn, where the Mensch truck from January remained parked.

They noted how the truck was scorched along the driver’s side at the rear compartment, where the 6.7-liter diesel engine drives both the wheels and the vacuum.

“The damage was consistent,” they wrote, “with what the driver of the manure truck on the night of the fire explained had occurred.”

Brand said investigators for his insurance company are still investigating the trucks and the precise cause of the fire.

Whether or not any regulatory body begins tracking manure vacuum truck safety, or if manufacturers find or acknowledge any shortcomings, the trucks are expected to appear in more farms across America. And those farms are growing.
Building South Fork Dairy in Texas

Eltje Frans Brand grew up around cows on his family’s small dairy farm in the Netherlands. In 1984, at 24 years old, he joined a wave of Dutch farmers who left behind the fertile lowlands of the Netherlands for cheaper, greener pastures in the U.S.

Entrance of South Fork Dairy near Dimmitt, Texas.

He started small, with just 40 cows, on a farm in East Texas. Over the years, that grew into a 1,000-cow farm, he said in an interview with USA TODAY.

In time, he oversaw several farms with his wife, Joni Ann. Daughters worked at his main offices in Energy, Texas, and Brand enlisted a son-in-law and another daughter to work a farm he owns in New Mexico, as well his other son-in-law, Linzer.

In 2019, the opportunity arose to open a much larger farm in Castro County, where land was cheaper and irrigation better suited for raising cows, Brand said. After securing a 640-acre stretch of land south of Dimmitt, in the Texas High Plains, he set his sights on much bigger herds.

The signature piece of South Fork Dairy was the expansive cross-ventilation barn, a technologically advanced, climate-controlled holding pen for his milking cows.

View of half-demolished cross-ventilation barn at South Fork Dairy.

The enclosed barn, where the bulk of the farm’s cows would live while being milked, featured two rows of industrial-sized exhaust fans on the east side of the building, which sucked stale air out and kept a constant breeze through the structure, and a heavy curtain on the west end that opened or closed remotely depending on outside weather.

High-pressure misters kept cows cool during summer’s broiling heat, and the curtains and fans kept the barn’s interior warmer in winter, Brand said.

From his main office 300 miles away, south of Fort Worth, Brand had hands-on control of the barn’s curtains, fans and misters and a monitor for the building’s temperature – all from an app on his iPad.
***

Castro County wasn’t always considered dairyland. Perched in the Texas High Plains, the county sits on an ocean of yellow prairie grass stretching to each horizon and punctuated by the occasional farmhouse, grain silo or towering wind turbine.

Osterkamp Dairy cows feed in Castro County, Texas.

Dimmitt, the county seat, offers a bed and breakfast, taquerias, a Subway sandwich shop, a Sonic and not much else but the ever-present scent of manure.

Cattle ranches have operated in Castro County and nearby Hereford, for generations, but the dairy farms didn’t start arriving until the early 2000s.

Dairy producers from California and East Texas started moving to the region, drawn to the area’s cheap land, former Dimmitt Mayor Roger Malone said.

Latinos also outnumber Anglos in the county by more than 2 to 1 as they’ve stepped into roles of milkers, ranch hands and other jobs on the farms.

As of November, Castro was the fourth-biggest milk producing county in Texas, with 14 dairies churning out more than 13 million gallons of milk a month, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“It’s a business,” Malone said. “It’s a big business.”

One of the more recent arrivals in Castro County is the Osterkamp Dairy, on the county’s western fringe.

Mark Osterkamp and his family moved their dairy from Southern California to Castro County in 2003, starting with 1,800 cows and raising the herd to 3,000.

On a recent afternoon there, workers dropped hay bales into feeding pens as cows waddled in for an early dinner. Unlike South Fork, Oskterkamp’s mostly Holstein cows live mostly outside.

Osterkamp said he, like others, was stunned by the news of the South Fork Dairy fire – and the sheer scope of the carnage. Such a loss would derail most smaller dairies, he said.

“How do you sustain that kind of loss?” Osterkamp said, as he drove his truck around the 100-acre farm, checking on milking cows, heifers and calves. “It was like something out of a movie.”

Mark Osterkamp, owner of Osterkamp Dairy in Castro County, Texas.

Oskterkamp said Brand was investing in the latest technology in raising milk cows and was operating at a scale that dwarfed the other large dairies in the area.

South Fork’s cross-ventilated barn was considered cutting-edge and a vanguard of modern milk production among Texas dairy producers, said Darren Turley, executive director of the Texas Association of Dairymen.

Brand “did everything that was available in the market to advance how he could take care of his cows,” he said. “That was the newest, most modern way to do it.”
***

Brand’s businesses remained family-run, differing from corporate-run farms that often draw the ire of environmentalists. He wouldn’t divulge the finances of his privately held dairies. But there’s little question that South Fork was among the biggest.

The trend toward larger CAFOs, defined by the EPA as having 1,000 or more animals, may mean fewer farms total, activists and analysts said. But each farm is bigger than ever.

In Texas, the number of dairy farms has actually shrunk dramatically over the years, from 1,924 in 1994 to 299 in 2023, according to the USDA. Yet in that same period, the total number of milk cows in the state rose from about 402,000 to 646,000.

A sign welcomes people to Dimmitt, Texas.

Activists say these big operations elbow out smaller, traditional farms. They also say larger herds mean potentially larger disasters.

The Animal Welfare Institute has tracked 6.6 million animals, including chickens, turkeys, pigs and cows, killed in barn fires since 2013.

“Because of the large operations, the death tolls keep increasing,” said Allie Granger, a senior policy associate at the institute. The South Fork Dairy fire, she said, “was unprecedented. I don’t think there’s ever been anything even close to this fire.”
***

Brand started South Fork with 8,000 cows in 2020, a mix of Holstein and Jersey cows, then added 9,500 the following year, bringing his herd up to 17,500 cows.

While the cross-vent barn was the signature feature, the rest of the operation was comparably high-tech.

Attached to the barn was the milking parlor. Here, cows were led onto large, slowly rotating platforms. The cows slipped into individual pens on the platform and, as the platform slowly turned, assembly-line style, a team of rubber-gloved-and-aproned female workers would wipe down each cow’s udder and attach mechanical suction cups – known as “the claw” – to each of the cow’s teats, drawing out milk.

The cows move while the workers stay in place. By the time the platform made a full turn, each udder was emptied. The cows are then led off the platform and a new batch climb aboard.

Running 24/7, the farm made enough milk to fill 24 semi-trailers each day. It was the crown jewel of a family-run operation, founded by an immigrant farmer, leading a growing industry in traditional cattle country, in a business so central to its region that it defines the very smell of the breeze.

But it was also a foray into cutting-edge technology, including a biogas system that was on the books for the farm but had not yet been installed.

Then came the evening of April 10, when Brand, like his son-in-law, got word of a fire.

He reached for his iPad to check the barn’s temperature and fan speed. The readings had stopped working.
Scene of the dairy fire

Castro County Sheriff Salvador Rivera was on a routine night patrol, driving north through the county, when he glanced into the rearview mirror. His heart leaped. A massive plume of black smoke was rising from the horizon around a half-mile behind him. He turned his vehicle around and headed toward the smoke.

The first emergency responder to arrive at the scene, Rivera pulled into the South Fork Dairy complex as the fire tore through the cross-ventilation barn and discovered a scene of pure chaos.

(Caution: Graphic image.)

A photo from the Texas State Fire Marshal's report shows mounds of dead cows from the South Fork Dairy fire in April 2023.

Workers pulled singed cows out of the barn or staggered around, confused. Some squatted on the dirt and cried.

Inside the barn, the fire had jumped into the spray foam insulation overhead – installed in the ceiling to keep cows cool in the withering Texas heat – and was falling off in large, glowing tongues, burning cows alive.

“It went from bad to worse in a matter of seconds,” Rivera said.

The sheriff found a manager who provided a list of the 18 workers who had been on shift that night. Slowly, they accounted for everyone – except for one: A woman who had been part of the four-person team in the milking parlor had gone to the bathroom just as the fire began. When she emerged, smoke and flame had engulfed the building and she locked herself back into the bathroom.

One of the workers called the woman on her cellphone. Rivera and others took turns urging her to come out, but she was confused and scared.

Then the line went silent. She had passed out.

***

On the day the fire started, South Fork Dairy was collecting its cow manure to be stored in an outdoor lagoon. But that was not the ultimate plan.

Brand told USA TODAY that his dairy was in the process of building a biogas digester, in partnership with California-based Clean Energy Fuels.

He was part of a growing trend. As of January 2023, 343 biogas digesters were operating across the U.S., up from just 37 in 2003, with another 86 under construction, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Nearly all of those – 290 – are on dairy farms.

“It’s a great deal,” said Mark Sustaire, 54, who recently installed a digester on his dairy farm in northeast Texas and feeds it food scraps and cow dung. “You’re taking a product that would end up in a landfill and dairy manure and using it to power people’s businesses and heat their homes.”

But the digesters incentivize large farms to increase herd sizes to sell their waste, essentially paying large-scale polluters to create bigger methane-laced messes then clean them up, said Rebecca Wolf, senior food policy analyst at the Food & Water Watch, a Washington-based environmental advocacy group.

Large farms also harm surrounding communities, largely filled with people of color, with pollutant runoff and aquifer contamination, she said. “The bigger the farm, the bigger the environmental challenge,” Wolf said.

Gary Foster, a Clean Energy spokesman, said digesters the company installs on farms typically cost $20 million to $70 million to build. The company had signed an agreement with South Fork Dairy but the energy firm had not started construction on the project, he said.

Foster disagreed with the premise that digesters are incentivizing dairies to grow bigger and, potentially, more prone to large-scale accidents.

“The farmers are not getting rich off these projects,” he said. “What these projects provide is a small, stable revenue stream to help offset the extreme volatility of milk prices, and the process of cleaning up manure, recaptures water for use in growing dairy crops as well as dry bedding for the cows (which helps keep them healthy).”

He restated Clean Energy’s commitment to farms such as the South Fork Dairy.

“The fire at the dairy was tragic, but Frank Brand and his team are some of the best operators in the dairy business and we have complete confidence in his commitment to safety,” Foster said.

The digesters may cost tens of millions of dollars to install – but farmers are not footing the bill alone. Chevron, BP and other energy giants are pouring billions of dollars into dairy digesters as a way to cut back on greenhouse gases, such as methane, while producing biogas. The energy companies often pay much of the startup cost of installation, then take a percentage of the revenue from the converted biogas that’s piped out of the digester. Dairies can also capitalize on federal subsidies offered to digester producers.

The rapid pace of biogas digesters appearing on farms prompted a group of U.S. lawmakers, including Sens. Corey Booker, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, to send a letter in August 2022 to the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, urging the agency to slow the incentives around the digesters.

“Factory farms produce immense quantities of waste and pollutants that fuel climate change and pollute the surrounding soil, air, and water − simply living in proximity to a factory farm can decrease life expectancy,” the letter read.
***

Rivera jogged from worker to worker on the burning farm, trying to decipher how to rescue the trapped worker.

A photo from the Texas State Fire Marshal's Office report shows fans in the cross-ventilation barn melted from the fire.

Just then, a team from the Dimmitt Volunteer Fire Department arrived on the scene. Rivera and the dairy workers were able to tell them where, exactly, the trapped woman was. The firefighters pulled on their bunker gear and rushed into the smoking building. Minutes later, they emerged with the unconscious woman.

She was taken to a hospital in nearby Lubbock, treated and released a few days later. (Brand declined to identify the worker, citing privacy concerns.)

“Good thing we got her and she was able to survive,” Rivera said. “Thank God no (person) died.”

Linzer arrived at the scene around 11 p.m. – he had raced across rural highways, covering more than 300 miles in just over three hours.

Firefighters doused the last of the remaining embers. The scene was staggering: Mounds of dead, blackened cows littered the farm. Rivulets of blood flowed from their carcasses. Some writhed in pain, badly burned and incapacitated but still alive, and had to be euthanized.

The barn’s fans, which had kept the cows comfortable in harsh weather, were blackened and melted from the blaze.

After inquiring about the employees, Linzer felt stunned by the sheer scope of the disaster, he said. All 17,500 cows were either dead or dying.

“It was awful,” he said. “We had a lot of cows that perished that night.”
***

For the following few days, Linzer was put in charge of overseeing the grisly task of disposing of the cow carcasses. Supervised by a state environmental official, workers at the dairy loaded the carcasses into semi-trailer trucks and ferried them about 6 miles down the road to another Brand-owned property, Linzer said. There, the cows were buried in three massive pits.

Brand said he and other workers were emotionally wrecked by the event. He, like Linzer, left home and drove several hours to reach Dimmit that night. He said he considers himself lucky not to have arrived at the dairy while the fire still raged, because he would have rushed into the barn to try to save the cows – and likely would have died in the blaze himself, he said.

“The only loss that could’ve been worse was losing my family,” Brand said. “The pain was so tremendous with this whole thing.”

After the cows had been cleared and the debris piled up, the Brand family made a quick decision. “There was never any doubt we would rebuild,” Linzer said. “Can’t let fire win.”

The private farm’s finances remain mostly out of view, and Brand would not comment on how much it would cost to rebuild.

The state’s fire inspectors, in concluding the fire was an accident, seemed to recognize their report would not necessarily be the end of the story.

“I understand that there will be multiple fire investigators and attorneys representing the insurance companies, equipment manufacturers, building components, and injured employees for the purpose of subrogation and personal injury” investigator Kelly Vandygriff wrote. “Because of this, we limited our investigation to the basics of determining the origin and cause of the fire.”

Brand and Linzer have their own conclusions about the fire.

Brand said the manure vacuum trucks should be better inspected. “Multiples of these machines have caught fire,” he said. “They need to be checked out.”

He also believes the spray foam insulation inside the barn should be better regulated – a sentiment echoed by his son-in-law.

By December, a tour of South Fork revealed a burned-out, half-demolished barn; blackened ceilings; piles of discarded insulation. It also showed a functioning dairy, still at work.

About 4,000 Holstein and Jersey cows now wander and low in a salvaged section of the burned-out cross-ventilation barn – signs of the dairy’s restocking of its herd.

View of half-demolished cross-ventilation barn at South Fork Dairy, where fire originated and where most of the cows died.

More than half of the barn has been demolished to make way for a new structure, still in the planning stages. One of the two rotary platforms in the milk parlor is back in operation and cows are guided on constantly to empty udders.

Brand said he’s in no hurry to rebuild – making sure they create a more fire-resistant barn – and may not repopulate his herd to quite the same numbers as before.

“I don’t ever want to see anything like this again,” Brand said.

Some of his plans remain on track.

Shortly after the fire, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted South Fork Dairy approval to install its planned digester. Clean Energy Fuels still plans to build it.

One permit from the state agency allowed the farm to expand its herd size to 32,000, which would make it one of the largest dairies in Texas.

Cows feed outdoors at South Fork Dairy near Dimmitt, Texas.

Someday soon, with the fire long over, the headlines forgotten, the barn rebuilt and the gas digester pumping, the signs of April’s disaster may be fully out of sight.

But in Castro County, the breeze always tells a story.

It has been months since the dead cows were hauled off, buried in the pits on the sister property down the road. But when the wind shifts just so, farm workers still detect a whiff of the charred, decaying carcasses.

“It’s death,” Linzer said. “You had a lot of cows in a concentrated area that perished. You’re going to have that smell linger.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dimmitt, Texas, dairy farm explosion: How 18,000 cows died in one fire

Senators demand Musk correct ‘apparent false and misleading representations’ of Tesla safety

Nick Robertson

THE HILL
Thu, December 28, 2023 


Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) went after Elon Musk on Thursday, demanding that the Tesla owner correct false statements about the safety of the company’s vehicles.

The letter comes after a report from Reuters last week found the company knowingly deployed defective parts to customers for years, avoiding recalls and potentially putting customers at risk.

“This reporting puts your statement from January that ‘Teslas are the safest car on the road’ at stark contrast with reality,” the senators wrote. “We call on you to swiftly recall all Tesla components that pose a safety risk and correct the record with NHTSA to ensure it can properly do its job,” they continued, referring to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The impacted parts included suspension connectors and power steering parts, which are both crucial to vehicle safety.

The investigation also found that Tesla often blamed customers for damage caused by defective parts and attempted to mislead federal safety regulators with incomplete data.

“In light of these apparent false and misleading representations, we demand that you correct the record in every respect and that you commit to providing accurate and truthful statements in the future,” the senators continued. “The credibility and reputation of your company is at stake — and even more importantly, the safety of motorists and others on the roads.”

“As you are well aware, no company is above the law,” they warned.

Tesla has been racked with safety investigations in recent months. The company recalled most of the vehicles it has ever produced earlier this month for a digital update to its Autopilot software over claims that it is unsafe.

In July, the NHTSA questioned Tesla over a “secret” Autopilot feature allowing drivers to use the software without placing their hands on the wheel, dubbed “Elon mode” after the company’s owner — billionaire Elon Musk.

“The resulting relaxation of controls designed to ensure that the driver remain engaged in the dynamic driving task could lead to greater driver inattention and failure of the driver to properly supervise Autopilot,” the agency wrote.

The California attorney general began its own investigation into the safety of Autopilot software and Tesla vehicles in July.

Two U.S. senators call for Tesla recalls after Reuters investigation

Steve Stecklow
Updated Wed, December 27, 2023


 Tesla recalls nearly all vehicles on US roads over lack of Autopilot safeguards

(Reuters) -Two U.S. senators have written to Elon Musk, Tesla’s top executive, calling on him to “swiftly” recall any steering and suspension parts that pose a safety risk.

The letter cites “an alarming” Reuters investigation published on December 20 that exposed how Tesla has blamed drivers for frequent failures of components it has long known were defective.


“We write with extreme concern following recent reporting about Tesla’s knowledge of safety flaws in its vehicles and concealment of the causes of these flaws from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,” states the letter, which is signed by Senators Richard Blumenthal, of Connecticut, and Edward J. Markey, of Massachusetts.

The senators call on Musk to correct “apparent false and misleading representations” made to the safety agency.

The Reuters report found that Tesla told NHTSA and customers that the frequent failures of defective parts in its electric vehicles were caused by driver “abuse,” such as hitting a curb. In 2020, Tesla gave that explanation in a letter to the safety agency explaining why it would not recall a suspension part called the aft link in the United States, despite having just recalled it in China.

Tesla documents reviewed by Reuters show the automaker’s engineers for years tracked frequent failures of aft links and other suspension, steering and axle parts, often on relatively new cars. The company instructed its service managers to tell customers that the parts were not faulty as it struggled to contain soaring warranty costs, the records reviewed by Reuters show.

“We are disturbed that you would blame your customers for these failures,” stated the letter from Blumenthal and Markey, both Democrats. “It is unacceptable that Tesla would not only attempt to shift the responsibility for the substandard quality of its vehicles to the people purchasing them, but also make that same flawed argument to NHTSA.”

Musk and Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the senators’ letter.

After this article was published, Tesla posted a response to the Reuters investigation on Musk’s social media platform, X, formerly known as Twitter. The automaker said the article’s headline – “Tesla blamed drivers for failures of parts it long knew were defective” – was “wildly misleading" and said the story “is riddled with incomplete and demonstrably incorrect information.”

Tesla said its “customer retention is among the best and highest in the industry” and the company “is truthful and transparent with our safety regulators around the globe and any insinuation otherwise is plain wrong.”

The automaker also challenged one customer's account that the suspension on his 2023 Model Y collapsed one day after he bought the car. Tesla said its "telemetry" data showed there was a prior "crash that resulted in this repair not being covered by warranty." The owner told Reuters he was the only person who drove the car before the suspension failure and hadn't had an accident.

Sweden's Transport Agency said on Friday that it’s investigating suspension failures in Tesla cars. The inquiry is similar to one being carried out in neighboring Norway, where the Norwegian Public Roads Administration said last week it was looking into consumer complaints about lower rear control arms breaking on its Model S and X vehicles.

Markey and Blumenthal have previously raised concerns about Tesla's marketing practices and the safety of its automated driving technology.

In April, the senators wrote to Musk questioning him about another Reuters investigation, which reported that groups of Tesla employees had circulated, via an internal messaging system, private and sometimes highly invasive recordings from customers' car cameras.

(Reporting by Steve Stecklow; editing by Brian Thevenot)

Tesla robot goes haywire on engineer in Texas factory: 'Trail of blood'

Brianna Herlihy

FOX NEWS
Thu, December 28, 2023

A Tesla engineer was reportedly a victim of a bloody attack by a robot at a factory near Austin, Texas.

Recent reports revealed a 2021 injury report that claims a robot designed to move aluminum car parts pinned the engineer against a surface and dug its metal claws into his back and arm, according to witnesses who spoke to The Information in a story published last month.

After another worker hit an emergency stop button, the engineer maneuvered his way out of the robot’s grasp, falling a couple of feet down a chute designed to collect scrap aluminum and leaving a trail of blood behind him, one of the witnesses told The Information.

The attack reportedly occurred while the engineer was programming software for two disabled Tesla robots nearby.

TESLA'S OPTIMUS ROBOT FUSES SELF-DRIVING TECH WITH MIND-BLOWING HUMANLIKE CAPABILITIES

In 2022, the Tesla Texas gigafactory was subject to a federal investigation for failing to pay workers holiday, overtime and other earned wages.

Staff attorney Hannah Alexander of the Workers Defense Project told a local news outlet the unpaid wages range from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars.

"For a corporation, a hundred, a thousand or ten thousand is nothing. For a community, that is rent, the groceries for the week, the difference between paying the utilities or not," Virginia Badillo, a Workers Defense Project board member, said during a press conference last year.

The group filed complaints with the U.S. Labor Department and the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), alleging contractors and subcontractors gave some workers fake safety certificates.

"Workers report that when they needed training, they were simply sent PDF files or images of certificates through text or WhatsApp in a matter of days when there’s no conceivable way workers could have even taken the training required," Alexander told KXAN news.

Tesla robot malfunctions, brutally attacks engineer 

| World Tech News | WION

 1 day ago  #robot #Tesla 

Robots are the future, yet, many warn that the technology is a danger to humans. Lending weight to this warning, in a shocking incident, at Tesla's Giga Texas factory near Austin, a malfunctioning robot reportedly attacked an engineer.

 …

Tesla engineer attacked by robot at company’s Giga Texas factory, report says

Maroosha Muzaffar

INDEPENDENT UK

Wed, December 27, 2023 



A Tesla engineer at the company’s factory near Austin was allegedly attacked by a robot in 2021, according to an incident report filed with regulators.

Witnesses allegedly observed the robot at the Giga Texas factory pin the engineer and claw at his back and arm, causing a “trail of blood” on the factory floor, according to the 2021 injury report filed to Travis county and federal regulators, which was reviewed by DailyMail.com.

The robot reportedly immobilised the engineer and left the victim with an “open wound” on his left hand.

The robot was designed to handle freshly-cast aluminium car parts.

The Independent has contacted Tesla for comment.

The engineer was able to break free from the assembly robot after a colleague pressed the emergency stop button. Upon being released, the engineer reportedly tumbled a few feet down a chute intended for collecting scrap aluminium, leaving a trail of blood.

According to reports, Tesla said the engineer’s injuries did not require him to take any time off work.

Tesla has faced criticism for its handling of workplace safety and accident reporting. At the Giga Texas plant, data has shown a higher rate of injuries compared to industry averages. In cases of severe on-the-job injuries, the ratio was one in every 26 workers at the Tesla Giga Texas plant compared to one in 38 workers at other major US auto factories.

 Tesla robot attacks auto worker

Queen City News

1 day ago

A worker was attacked while making a software update on 2 other robots. The other robot was still turned on when it attacked. Chief Transportation Correspondent Maycay Beeler breaks down how this happened and the future of robots.

 

Tesla Engineer Injured in Bloody Robot Attack at Texas Factory

Cassidy Ward

SYFY
Wed, December 27, 2023 



Before Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza was the setting for one the most successful modern video game franchises – Five Nights at Freddy’s – and a Hollywood movie adaptation (streaming now on Peacock!), it was the site of a series of grizzly in-game murders. Those killings, always of abducted children, were never solved. Their bodies left to decay in and their souls left to meld with the animatronic characters that call Freddy’s home.

Those robots, now imbued with all of the twisted and hateful desires of the unsatisfied dead, exact their vengeance on anyone within snatching distance. Of course, that’s all just an entertaining fiction. Real world robots don’t have motives except for the ones we give them, and they don’t attack people without warning. At least, they shouldn’t, but that’s just what happened at a Tesla factory in Texas.

Tesla Engineer Attacked by Robot’s Metal Claws

The incident occurred back in 2021 at the Giga Texas Tesla factory near Austin, Texas, according to a report from News Nation. The accident happened in part of the factory where freshly pressed aluminum car parts come off the line.

New parts begin as thin sheets of aluminum which are then cast in molds to achieve the desired shape. When parts come out of those molds, they still have the leftover edges of the aluminum sheet sticking off the sides. These extra bits, called flashing, have to be removed and that’s where the robots come in. A trio of robots are responsible for removing new parts from their aluminum cages with their gripping metal claws.

Engineers were working in the area, updating software which controls the robots, when the attack took place. Two of the robots were turned off but a third remained active and continued its normal operations. Witnesses reported that the robot dug its claws into the back and arm of an engineer, leaving a “trail of blood” in its wake, via The Information.

RELATED: Even Robots Can Be Fooled, But They’re Getting Smarter

Tesla is required to report all injuries to the state and Travis County in order to continue receiving tax breaks, and the incident report for the 2021 robot attack was reviewed by the Daily Mail. According to the report, the incident left the engineer with an open wound on their hand, but the injuries did not require any time off.

Injuries at the Texas factory are more common than average by industry standards. According to reports, roughly 1 in 21 employees were injured at the Giga Texas factory in 2022, compared to 1 in 30 across the automotive industry, according to the New York Post. The dangers inherent in increased human-robot interactions are a growing concern for roboticists who are scrambling to develop better systems to prevent exactly this sort of accident.

In the meantime, it’s up to us to see the gaps the robots can’t see if we want to keep ourselves (and the employees we are responsible for) safe. Otherwise, in life as in Five Nights at Freddy’s, we will be the architects of our own robotic nightmare.

Robot attacks worker

KTSM 9 NEWS

Dec 28, 2023

A Tesla engineer was reportedly attacked by a robot at a factory near Austin.

 

Elon Musk rips media reports of robot 'attack' in Tesla's Texas factory

Kwan Wei Kevin Tan

Business Insider
Wed, December 27, 2023



Elon Musk isn't happy with how the media has covered an accident involving his factory's robots.


"Truly shameful of the media to dredge up an injury from two years ago," Musk wrote on X.


Musk said the reports falsely implied that the accident was due to his humanoid Optimus robots.

Elon Musk has slammed recent media reports of a robot "attack" in a Tesla factory in Austin.

"Truly shameful of the media to dredge up an injury from two years ago due to a simple industrial Kuka robot arm (found in all factories) and imply that it is due to Optimus now," Musk wrote in an X post on Wednesday.

The Tesla CEO was responding to an X user who'd shared a Daily Mail report from Tuesday about a factory robot incident in 2021.

The Information had also covered the incident in a story published last month. According to the outlet, two witnesses said that an engineer was running software updates on the factory's robots when he was grabbed and pinned against the surface by one of the machines.

The witnesses also said that the engineer was left bleeding after the robot had sunk its claws into his body. The engineer eventually escaped the robot's clutches when another worker pressed the emergency stop button, per The Information.

Musk's ire at the Daily Mail's post, however, appears to be at the outlet's framing of the accident. The Daily Mail's story used a thumbnail featuring Tesla's humanoid Optimus robots — not the Kuka robot arm that was involved in the 2021 incident.

Musk's defense of the Optimus robots will come as no surprise as he has high hopes for them. When he unveiled them last year, he said the economy could become "quasi-infinite" if the Optimus robots were capable of manual labor.

"This means a future of abundance. A future where there is no poverty, where you could have whatever you want in terms of products and services," Musk said then.

Safety complaints, however, have long dogged Musk's Tesla factories. In 2020, California regulators said Tesla had sent them incomplete factory injury reports.

And it's not just the US. Recently, in April, Chinese inspectors said they wanted to punish the company for safety weaknesses, per Caixin Global. According to the report, a Tesla factory worker in Shanghai died after getting crushed by factory equipment.

In October, Tesla rejected claims from a German union and the country's media outlets that the Berlin Gigfactory lacked proper safety provisions.

Representatives for Tesla and Kuka did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.

Kirk Douglas Fights Evil Robot - Saturn 3 (1980)

ScreamFactoryTV

Adam (Kirk Douglas) and Alex (Farrah Fawcett) are two scientists stationed deep beneath the barren surface of Saturn's third moon, Titan. They live together in idyllic isolation in a space-age Eden, seeking new forms of food for an exhausted planet Earth. Their perfect world is interrupted when Benson (Harvey Keitel) arrives as Saturn goes into eclipse and cuts off communication with the rest of the solar system. Aided by his 'helper robot' Hector, James reduces life to one single purpose...survival. The robot becomes violently unmanageable. For Adam and Alex, their only hope is to flee, but the homicidal robot stands in their way. Produced and directed by legendary filmmaker Stanley Donen (Singin' In The Rain, Charade and Seven Brides For Seven Brothers), Saturn 3 is a pulse-pounding study in sci-fi suspense!

Saturn 3 - Rare Deleted Scene

This video contains an extended scene that was not shown in the theatrical version of the film.  Adam (Kirk Douglas) takes the robot, Hector, outside to try to teach him a few things while Alex (Farrah Fawcett) fends off advances by James/Benson (Harvey Keitel)  The video includes portions shown in the theatrical version at the beginning and end of the clip to help place this scene in perspective.

The time in 1978 when a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite crashed into Canada and scattered radioactive debris everywhere

Chris Panella
Thu, December 28, 2023

In 1978, a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite malfunctioned and crashed into northern Canada.


Kosmos 954 spread radioactive debris across hundreds of miles, leading to an extensive cleanup.


Reactions by the US, Soviet Union, and their respective allies marked a major moment in the Cold War.

Almost 50 years ago, a Soviet nuclear-powered satellite experienced a malfunction, fell out of the sky, and exploded over North America, scattering dangerous debris.

The initial crash, cleanup effort, and reactions from across the world were major moments, heightening Cold War tensions and leading to questions about the future of nuclear energy.

In September 1977, the Soviet Union launched Kosmos 954, a reconnaissance satellite, part of a larger program designed to monitor NATO and commercial vessels at sea. These Soviet satellites were powered by nuclear reactors, the majority of which were fueled by uranium, and designed for long-term orbit observation, giving the Soviets an effective way to spy on the US and its allies.

These types of satellites, US intelligence surmised, use a small nuclear reactor to power their radar and the onboard equipment needed to communicate with ground control. But this wasn't confirmed, and the Soviets were unsurprisingly tight-lipped about the operation.

The Soviet Union placed a series of radar-equipped ocean reconnaissance satellites (RORSATs) in low Earth orbit beginning in 1967.Ronald C. Wittmann, Smithsonian Exhibit, Defense Intelligence Agency

Just a few months after the launch, Kosmos 954 wasn't looking like a success mission.

In November, the Soviets began having trouble tracking it and found that the satellite had deviated from its orbit and was moving at unpredictable speeds and in irregular directions. US intelligence was closely monitoring the situation, too, and had clocked that this satellite was operating differently than other Soviet spacecraft.

By December, the US and some allies were in full crisis management mode. They were sure the Soviets were going to lose control of the satellite, which they did a month later in January 1978, and the rogue Kosmos 954 was likely going to reenter the atmosphere.

Part of the problem, the US later determined, was that the Soviet satellite didn't eject its spent reactor core into an orbit far from Earth — a graveyard orbit — and was instead going to crash land with its nuclear reactor still attached. Depending on where it landed, this could either be benign — an ocean landing, for instance, would have little impact — or, were it to crash near a highly populated area, disastrous.

But regardless of where or how it landed, the crash of the Kosmos 954 would still be, as Gus W. Weiss, a White House policy adviser, wrote in an assessment on "The Life and Death of Cosmos 954," "a no-win situation."

"A colleague suggested the outcome of 954 would be akin to determining the winner of a train wreck," Weiss said.

Artist rendering of the Soviet satellite Kosmos 954US Department of Energy

In the early days of 1978, the US and the Soviet Union had a frank conversation — er, a lively back-and-forth "in the spirit of cooperation," Weiss added.

American officials said they'd determined Kosmos 954 would crash "any time within the next month" and were concerned that it was powered by a nuclear reactor and "reentry into the atmosphere thus may represent a potential for nuclear contamination."

"If the debris falls on or near a populated area, there is the obvious possibility of a serious hazard to the public," they added.

The Soviets responded rather curtly, according to a paraphrased answer, saying the satellite was "explosive-proof" and would burn up in the atmosphere.

But, the Soviets added, "it cannot be ruled out that some destroyed parts of the plant still would reach the surface of the Earth. In that case an insignificant local contamination may occur in the places of impact with Earth which would require limited usual measures of cleaning up," according to Weiss' report.

Nothing to worry about, the Soviet response indicated. But that wasn't quite right, the parties involved would later learn.

By mid-January, US intelligence had determined that the satellite Kosmos 954 was going to crash somewhere in North America. In cooperation with Canada, the US deployed a variety of forces as part of Operation Morning Light — from radioactivity detectors to special nuclear accident support teams — across the areas where the satellite would potentially reenter the atmosphere.

The goal was to be ready for collection and cleanup as quickly as possible, wherever it landed and whenever.



#OnThisDay 1978: The nuclear-powered Kosmos-954 reentered over NW Canada (No. 5): https://t.co/HdnH3T3YCY pic.twitter.com/vRrtE5qUQx

— Dave Dickinson (@Astroguyz) January 24, 2016

On January 24, it was go time. Kosmos 954 fell through the atmosphere, quickly flying across northwestern Canada. Soviet officials were certain that it had burned up completely upon reentry, but the US and Canadian teams recovered plenty of debris from the satellite across an area of hundreds of square miles.

"The search for radiative debris was quickly put into action," Hsieh Ch'u of the Foreign Technology Division, a former name for the US Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center unit, wrote in a 1979 report. "More than one hundred nuclear scientists and technicians and the emergency team were sent to the area where the satellite crash had taken place."

A U-2 reconnaissance jet, a WC-135 weather observation plane with radiation detecting instruments, and several of Canada's C-130 planes were deployed. Teams wore heavy anti-radiation suits, ultimately recovering 12 large pieces, 10 of which were highly radioactive.

Despite the potential hazardous effects of nuclear debris spreading across the environment, the US and Canada were especially interested in recovering as much of the wreckage as possible. For one thing, they wanted to prevent the debris from harming the inhabitants.

But this is the Cold War we're talking about. They also wanted information. The Kosmos 954 crash was a unique opportunity for the US and its allies to collect data on what reconnaissance technology the Soviets were using, as well as what information the Soviets had collected with the satellite.

As Ch'u wrote, "the crash of this Soviet satellite was indeed an unexpected opportunity for the intelligent organizations of the United States and its allies in the Western World."

The Soviets wanted in on the search and rescue, too, but the US wasn't having that. When the Soviets asked, the US simply declined and left it at that.



Kosmos 954
Russian nuclear powered satellite that crashed in Canada and required clean up of radioactive componentshttps://t.co/CWRneJiegx pic.twitter.com/JwAKm9Gfgl

— Casillic (@Casillic) December 25, 2016

In the aftermath of the multi-million-dollar, two-month operation, there were plenty of questions about who was and wasn't informed about the Kosmos 954 disaster. The general public certainly wasn't, in part because all informed NATO allies were told to keep the information private.

"A reversal" at the last minute, Weiss wrote, "would have been, at best, awkward."

Speaking of informed NATO allies, it became quite clear that the US had trouble figuring out which of its partners to tell and which to not. This sparked some tension, notably from South Korea and Spain, who, afterwards, were "questioning the advantages of their ties with the US," US officials said when reporting on reactions to the accident.

Close allies, like UK and France, were informed, as were others that the US had "special relationships" with, Weiss said.

"What were our responsibilities to our allies and to the world for a problem which was not of our making but about which we know? Skipping pros and cons, lists of countries, and the imponderable factor that the more nations informed, the greater chance of a leak, the notification problem was surely disturbing," he questioned.

"Mortals, with notorious shortcomings, should not have to make these judgements," Weiss surmised.

News of the satellite crash did eventually break, and while the general media reaction towards the relevant efforts was favorable, there was some criticism of the US over how long it took to tell Canada about the potential for Kosmos 954 to reenter the atmosphere over its territory.

At center stage, both at the International Press Center and in the world scheme of things, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and U.S. president Ronald Reagan smile during concluding summit ceremony.

Getty Images

The Kosmos 954 accident came at what would become a turning point in the Cold War. After the general easing of relations between the US and Soviet Union during President Richard Nixon's term, the late 1970s saw tensions enter a new phase with the Soviet-Afghan War and, going into the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan's confrontational policies.

"The climax of the drama of Soviet satellite crash was over," Ch'u wrote. "But the event once again made peoples over the world aware of the fact the armament race between the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviets could bring threat and disasters to the life of common people."

More recently, a relatively new podcast called "Operation Morning Light" has delved into the history of the Kosmos 954 incident, as well as the long-term consequences of the spread of radioactive debris on the Dene indigenous people near Great Slave Lake. Their communities still live with the effects, including radiation in soil and high cancer rates, today.