Science

The L.A. wildfire cleanup was fast. Residents eager to rebuild worry officials chose speed over safety

Published

5 months ago

December 3, 2025

The L.A. wildfire cleanup was fast. Residents eager to rebuild worry officials chose speed over safety

The devastation left in the wake of January’s Eaton and Palisades fires was unimaginable. The firestorms engulfed 59 square miles of Southern California — more than twice the size of Manhattan — transforming entire city blocks in Altadena and Pacific Palisades into corridors of ashes, twisted metal and skeletal trees.

Federal disaster officials rapidly deployed thousands of workers to gather up the wreckage across the burn scars. Armed with shovels and heavy construction equipment, crews quickly collected fire debris from rugged cliffsides, dusky shorelines and sprawling burnt-out neighborhoods. In a matter of months, they transformed the heaps of charred rubble into mostly vacant matchbox lots, ready for rebuilding.

Recently, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reported that it had finished clearing roughly 2.6 million tons of wreckage from nearly 9,700 properties, an astonishing eight-month federal cleanup that has been extolled as the largest and fastest in modern American history. Private contractors removed fire debris from an additional 2,100 parcels.

However, many experts worry that the rapid pace of federal cleanup resulted in sloppy work, time-saving measures and lax oversight that may ultimately cost homeowners.

The Army Corps has largely demobilized and contractors have cleared out, and they’ve left serious questions for disaster victims who are preparing to embark on one of the region’s largest reconstruction campaigns in the past century.

Mandana Sisco, right, and her husband, Justin, visit the site where their home once stood as their children, Marley, 5, and her brother, August, 7, play in Pacific Palisades. The Siscos, who had their lot independently tested for toxins, were relieved when tests revealed there was no contamination to the soil.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Federal officials also notably disavowed the need to conduct soil testing, insisting it would be too time-consuming. But soil sampling performed by university researchers, local public health authorities and Los Angeles Times journalists have found excessive levels of toxic metals at properties already cleared by the Army Corps.

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A team of university scientists from UCLA, Loyola Marymount and Purdue tested soil samples from 47 already-cleaned homes in Altadena, finding 49% of already-cleaned homes still had elevated levels of lead above California’s standards for residential properties.

“It’s not a recovery if you leave 50% of the properties unsafe.”

— Andrew Whelton, Purdue University

“This recovery cannot be credibly compared to any other wildfire cleanup in recent memory,” said Andrew Whelton, an engineering professor at Purdue University who studies natural disaster recovery. “And that is because of deliberate decisions by government officials at all levels to skip soil testing. They did not determine that when the contractors left a property, the property was safe to use.

“It’s not a recovery if you leave 50% of the properties unsafe. While the federal government may demobilize, the onus now has been pushed to the property owners to either finish the job. Or they can ignore it, because L.A. County doesn’t require your property to be safe to rebuild.”

Despite such concerns, many praise the effort for its efficiency. The speedy recovery has allowed some survivors, including Altadena resident Carlos Lopez, to rebuild much earlier than they anticipated.

“It’s hope,” Lopez said about his homesite, where, on Sept. 10, workers have already built a wooden frame. “Neighbors that I talked to, we just wanted something to grasp onto that we’re actually moving forward. There’s some realization that we can get back home sooner rather than later.”

Line chart showing the percent of cleanup for both the Eaton and Palisades fires

Col. Jeffrey Palazzini, who oversaw debris removal operations for the Palisades fire, said the Army Corps and its contractors have largely received positive feedback from property owners, like Lopez. He said the speed is a reflection of the urgency of the public health threat, not necessarily an indication of poor workmanship.

Signs are posted as construction is underway on the home of Carlos Lopez in Altadena.

The L.A. County wildfire cleanup marks the maturation of a federal wildfire response that has tackled a barrage of historically destructive fires in Oregon in 2020, New Mexico in 2022 and Hawaii in 2023 — each of which were the largest wildfires in their state’s history.

“Over the past seven to 10 years, I think there has been — sadly — enough experiences for this process to be streamlined and improved upon with lessons learned each time it happens,” said Laurie Johnson, a renowned urban planner who specializes in natural disaster recovery. “And I think L.A. has been a benefit of that.”

Lindsey Horvath, L.A. County supervisor representing the Palisades, expressed cautious optimism for the road ahead. “Throughout the cleanup, we’ve followed all recommended best practices and will continue to follow the advice of experts throughout our recovery,” Horvath said in a statement. “I continue to call for soil testing to give homeowners greater peace of mind before rebuilding, and support efforts to make recovery assistance more accessible so we can rebuild faster and safer. Recovery doesn’t end here.”

Early days

In Pacific Palisades and Malibu, the wildfires turned some of the region’s most famous stretches of roads — including Sunset Boulevard and Pacific Coast Highway — into an unrecognizable labyrinth of debris. Mansions with picturesque views of the Pacific Ocean were obliterated into charred slabs of stucco, broken concrete and dust.

In Altadena, a middle-class melting pot tucked into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, the inferno consumed century-old cottages and family-owned businesses on Lake Avenue, the community’s main commercial drag.

In the wake of these twin disasters, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration asked the federal government to take the lead on recovery. In the final days of his administration, President Biden approved funding and deployed federal agencies to start removing and disposing the most dangerous materials from affected properties.

Jan. 9 aerial view of neighborhoods destroyed by the Palisades fire.

In mid-January, neighborhoods were a literal minefield of explosive materials, including propane tanks, firearm ammunition and large lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, e-bikes and blackout-ready battery storage systems. There were also a plethora of household items that contained corrosive acids and toxic ingredients that needed to be collected to prevent them from polluting soil and groundwater.

On Jan. 16, the Environmental Protection Agency deployed its first teams to assess the damage and presence of hazardous materials. The agency ultimately identified about 13,600 properties, mostly single-family homes, that had been damaged or destroyed in the fire, and probably rife with hazardous materials.

Within days of taking office, President Trump signed an executive order instructing the EPA to expedite the removal of hazardous materials. EPA administrator Lee Zeldin later said Trump had directed the agency to complete the mission in 30 days — a demanding directive for work that typically takes several months.

In response, the Federal Emergency Management Agency increased disaster funding by nearly $179 million, money used to “surge” 850 contractors to collect the most dangerous materials from the burn scars by that deadline, according to records obtained by The Times.

In white coverall suits and full-face respirators, hazmat workers went property by property sifting through the ashes to dredge up lead-acid batteries, tins of paint thinner and pesticide canisters.

EPA personnel and agency contractors converted popular community gathering spots, including the driving range of Altadena Golf Course and the parking lot of Will Rogers State Beach, into hazmat stockpile sites. Workers laid down multiple layers of plastic liners where materials could be sorted and eventually hauled to hazardous waste dumps.

EPA crews comb the ruins of a home on Miami Way that was burned in the Palisades fire.

On Feb. 25 — two days ahead of schedule — the EPA announced it had completed that work. Its hazmat crews had overseen the removal of 300 tons of hazardous debris from 9,400 properties — making it the largest-ever hazardous materials cleanup for a wildfire the EPA had ever executed.

However, the EPA had also passed over 4,500 parcels, or 30% of properties, deeming them unsafe to enter. A Times analysis of residential properties found that workers balked at accessing 1,336 homes damaged or destroyed in the Palisades fire, and 1,453 homes in the Eaton fire.

EPA spokesperson Julia Giarmoleo said the deferred properties had hazardous trees, dangerous obstructions, steep slopes and unstable walls that prevented the EPA field teams from safely accessing the property.

“EPA’s operations are always based on completing the entirety of our work as quickly, efficiently, and safely as possible,” Giarmoleo said. “In the case of the L.A. fires, EPA encountered a higher percentage of properties that required deferral due to partial structural destruction compared to previous EPA wildfire responses.”

The remaining hazmat work was, instead, left for the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency tasked with handling the second phase of debris removal.

The Army Corps rolls in

The Army Corps and its primary contractor, Environmental Chemical Corp., were charged with removing millions of tons of ash, concrete and metal. They vowed to remediate upward of 12,000 properties by January 2026 — within a year of when the deadly wildfires first broke out. The ambitious timeline would outpace any wildfire debris removal mission the Army Corps had ever tackled, including the 18-month recovery for the 2023 Lahaina wildfire that destroyed 2,200 homes and buildings.

Jan. 14 photo of Eliot Arts Magnet Middle School burned by the Eaton fire in Altadena.

The Army Corps and ECC hired several subcontractors, and in early February dispatched the first cleanup crews to several schools that were ruined in the fires, including Pasadena Rosebud Academy Charter School in Altadena, where hazmat workers shoveled asbestos waste into thick plastic bags. They waded through a field of charred debris, gathering up fire-gnarled steel rods, metal door frames and structural beams into piles, which were later loaded onto dump trucks and hauled away to landfills.

Soon after, workers moved onto fire-destroyed homes. In mid-February, after a two-day delay due to heavy rainfall, crews finished clearing their first homesites in Altadena and Pacific Palisades.

A view of Eliot Arts Magnet Middle School after the federal cleanup.

As the cleanup progressed, one obstacle for public officials was tracking down the thousands of displaced survivors and getting them to sign paperwork that would grant federal cleanup crews permission to clear their properties. Because the fast-moving wildfires forced people to evacuate with little warning, many fled with only the clothes on their backs.

“Obviously, someone will have to be last. But we wanted to make sure that process was transparent.”

— Anish Saraiya, director of Altadena recovery director

Army Corps personnel tried to disseminate sign-up instructions and appeal to the public at press conferences and community meetings. Local officials helped by making phone calls to disaster victims in parts of Altadena where response had been lacking, according to Anish Saraiya, Altadena’s recovery director for L.A. County Supervisor Kathyn Barger’s office.

“Our office even started calling individual property owners, because there was already a concern about the disparity postfire west of Lake [Avenue],” Saraiya said. “One of the things we wanted to make sure is that this was an equitable process that got to everybody at once. Obviously, someone will have to be last. But we wanted to make sure that process was transparent.”

Wildfire victims seek disaster relief services at one of two FEMA Disaster Recovery Centers in Pasadena.

By April, with roughly 9,000 opt-ins, the federal cleanup had hit its stride. About 230 cleanup crews and 4,000 workers fanned out across the burn scars, working 12-hour shifts to remove debris from homes and haul it to landfills and scrapyards.

Following reporting by The Times, FEMA and the Army Corps drew criticism from environmental advocates and fire survivors for deciding not to perform soil testing after cleanups to ensure properties did not have toxic metals, such as lead, above California’s health standards for residential properties.

It would be the first major wildfire response in California since 2007 without a measurable goal for clearing toxic substances.

Homes destroyed by the Eaton fire were cleaned at a faster rate than those affected by the Palisades fire, according to a Times analysis of residential properties. Army Corps officials said they attempted to prioritize properties near schools, coastlines, waterways and occupied homes.

One such property belonged to Bronwen Sennish and her husband; their Spanish-style home had been a short distance from Palisades Elementary Charter School.

Sennish said she appreciated the sense of urgency and sensitivity with which the Army Corps approached her home. On one April morning, when she and her husband arrived at their lot, heavy machinery was already humming. Sennish said that the crew happily explained the parameters of their work. And the excavator operator took the time to sift through the rubble with the two in search for anything salvageable. “People who have been trained in the military are incredibly good at problem solving and logistics,” Sennish said.

But not everyone had a positive experience.

Cleanup crews, for example, excavated too much soil from Colten Sheridan‘s lot in northeast Altadena in April, according to internal Army Corps reports obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Sheridan, who is still displaced and living temporarily in Santa Cruz County, said he was never informed of the potentially costly mistake.

Instead, five months later, while Sheridan contemplated rebuilding plans, he was shocked to find out from L.A. Times journalists that his property had been the subject of a complicated internal debate within the Army Corps and debris removal workers.

“I feel like I absolutely should have been notified. I’m just reeling in my head right now,” he said. “If they over-excavated, and if they’re not going to do anything about it, what are my recourses? I don’t know.”

In early September, Sheridan called an Army Corps hotline dedicated to handling questions and concerns about the federal cleanup, but didn’t get answers.

A sign expressing community resilience in Altadena on Sept. 10.

A sign announces a future home to be built on a destroyed property in Altadena.

Now Sheridan fears he may have to foot the bill to bring in clean soil and regrade his property before he can rebuild. If a home is seated too low, it won’t be able to properly connect sewer lines and storm drains, which require a high-to-low slope.

Army Corps officials declined to comment on Sheridan’s property, citing privacy concerns.

Many environmentalists and community members had worried the speed of the cleanup might lead to workers cutting corners or substandard workmanship.

Cleanup supervisors routinely observed workers without masks and other safety equipment, according to Army Corps records. In some cases, workers disregarded decontamination protocols by stepping outside of contaminated areas without rinsing their boots.

Jana Karibyna in the backyard of her home after it was destroyed by the Eaton fire.

And according to internal documents attained by The Times, debris crews were regularly confused how to handle contaminated pool water — which researchers have found to contain trace amounts of lead, arsenic and other toxic chemicals. The contractors allegedly sprayed it into building footprints, front lawns, neighboring properties and even in the street, where it could have ended up in drainage systems leading to the oceans.

James Mayfield, owner of Mayfield Environmental Engineering, a private contractor specializing in hazardous materials, cleaned around 200 properties destroyed in the L.A. fires. For pools filled with ash, he suctioned contaminated water with a vacuum truck and sent it to locations that treat wastewater.

Mayfield believes inexperienced workers and the breakneck timeline probably led to some crews ignoring those best practices and redepositing toxic metals onto residential properties and local waterways.

“Proper hazmat disposal is about $10,000,” Mayfield said. “You can imagine, most people didn’t want to do that. They want to cut corners.”

Many wealthier homeowners with robust insurance policies opted out of the federal cleanup and decided to hire private contractors, which, in some cases, may have expedited their cleanup and rebuilding timeline, and provided access to services the government program didn’t provide — such as post-cleanup testing or property-wide soil removal.

A Times analysis of the private cleanups underscores the wealth gap between affluent residents of Pacific Palisades and working-class communities in Altadena: At least 1,392 homes opted out of the cleanup in the Palisades, nearly four times the number in the Eaton fire area, according to the analysis.

Tom James, a lifelong Palisades resident, decided that the Army Corps cleanup came with too many uncertainties. He also didn’t feel comfortable signing the liability waiver that would indemnify the federal government and contractors in the event of mistakes. He chose instead to hire a private crew that he was able to pay with his insurance policy, to clear out fire debris from his historic Victorian home in the heart of the Alphabet Streets, along with his collection of vintage cars and motorcycles in his garage underneath.

Still, James was affected by federal contractors. An Army Corps crew working next door left a large pile of his neighbors’ soil in his backyard. He walked down to the American Legion where Army Corps officials were stationed to let them know. A representative apologized and vowed to remove soil, but James said they never returned.

A time to rebuild

All told, the federal project cleared 9,673 properties — a mix of home sites, commercial properties, parks and schools — according to the Army Corps.

Aerial view of cleared properties and construction crews working on rebuilding a home in Altadena.

That has paved the way for the submission of more than 3,000 applications to rebuild — some 900 of which have already been approved.

In Altadena, some residents ready to rebuild have returned to their empty lots in RVs. The screech of tablesaws and popping of nail guns break up the silence in the fire-hollowed corners of these neighborhoods.

“I had a very simple lot, and they took everything I wanted removed … my neighbor has a real issue to solve now with getting dirt back in.”

— Lamar Bontrager, Altadena resident.

Lamar Bontrager, a real estate agent, has already laid a foundation and begun framing his home on Loma Alta Drive. He credits the Army Corps for the quick start.

“I had a very simple lot, and they took everything I wanted removed,” Bontrager said. Bontrager counts himself lucky. Looking at other lots around town, he said some neighbors will have a big lift. “At some houses, they [federal contractors] dug massive holes — my neighbor has a real issue to solve now with getting dirt back in.”

A fallen tree in front of a construction crew rebuilding an Altadena home that burned down.

While the cleanup was the fastest in history, some survivors feel forgotten. According to federal records, 391 property owners who requested federal help were deemed ineligible by FEMA.

FEMA says some of those properties did not experience enough damage for eligibility. The agency deemed others, including many multi-family homes, as commercial properties, and, therefore, also ineligible.

These decisions put some of the largest housing developments affected by the fires in a bind. For example, the Army Corps cleared the Tahitian Terrace mobile home park in Pacific Palisades, across the street from Will Rogers State Beach, but did not clean up the Pacific Palisades Bowl, a 170-unit mobile home park next door.

“There’s hundreds and hundreds of people that are still having sleepless nights.”

— Jon Brown, Pacific Palisades Bowl resident.

Residents were never told why one property qualified and the other did not; those decisions are entirely up to FEMA.

Rusted metal frames and a blanket of pallid ash still sit within a few hundred feet from the ocean. Residents, who have heard little from the landowners about the dilemma, have been stuck in limbo.

“There’s hundreds and hundreds of people that are still having sleepless nights,” said one resident, Jon Brown, co-chair of the Palisades Bowl Community Partnership fighting for residents’ right to return home. “I just drove by the park today and it just makes me sick.”

Brown and others have watched the Corps clear thousands of lots and a handful of owners start rebuilding, while their piles of charred debris remained virtually untouched. They have little certainty they’ll ever be able to return.

Brown, facing steep rent for temporary housing, fears the owners may be looking for a way out — selling the land or changing its use.

“What is going to compel them to rebuild it as a mobile home park if they can’t even be motivated to clean it up?” Brown asked.

Federal disaster officials and contractors are no longer around to answer those questions.

Before the Army Corps and its workers packed up, they held two small ceremonies to commemorate the last homes to be cleaned in each burn scar.

In Altadena, Tami Outterbridge, daughter of renowned artist John Outterbridge, had specifically requested to be last.

Tami Outterbridge is working to preserve the legacy of her father, artist John Outterbridge.

She and her mother, Beverly, lived in two separate homes on their family’s lot in West Altadena. They postponed their cleanup several times, asking her father’s friends and contemporaries to help them scour the ashes for pieces of his artwork and other mementos. They found a pair of her father’s vintage spectacles and fragments of his sculptures, assembled from knickknacks and everyday objects.

When the cleanup crew arrived in mid-August, they came with a team of dog-assisted archaeologists that helped find her grandmother’s ashes — and recover some of John Outterbridge’s collection of flutes from underneath a collapsed wall.

“Those are things that literally are irreplaceable,” Tami Outterbridge said. “As I was reckoning with what it meant to say you’ve lost two homes and all your possessions — that’s when the idea started formulating. I can literally adhere to Dad’s art practice, which was very much about this notion of finding objects that other people saw as discarded — not worthy, trash debris — and turning them into aesthetic marvels.”

Stanley C. Wilson sifts through the ashes that remain of John Outterbridge's family home.

At the Aug. 14 ceremony commemorating Outterbridge’s home as the final Altadena home to be cleaned as part of the federal project, Saraiya, the Altadena recovery director, looked around at a neighborhood that just a few months ago had been chock-full of ash and cinders. It was now a sweeping panorama of mostly empty, mulch-covered lots.

“I’m not a very emotional person, but I felt myself getting choked up,” he said, “because it was really this one clarifying moment that this work is done.”

Saraiya said he understood local officials would need to soon start discussing rebuilding roads, installing underground power lines and planning a more fire-resilient community. “After all of these months, after all of this work and all of this effort — there’s so much more to do.”

Assistant data and graphics editor Vanessa Martinez and senior journalist Lorena Iñiguez Elebee contributed to this report.

Science

5 Great Stargazing Trains

Published

4 hours ago

May 14, 2026

Press Room

Stargazing, it turns out, doesn’t have to be a stationary activity.

On railway lines around the world, from the Arctic Circle to New Zealand, a select set of evening train excursions take riders deep into dark-sky territory — some en route to remote station stops decked out with telescopes, others featuring onboard astronomers.

These five rail journeys (all of which are accessible) range from two- to three-hour desert outings to a hunt for the northern lights. One route even has a planetarium on rails. All promise a renewed appreciation of train travel — and of our pale blue dot’s improbable place in the cosmos.

Nevada

The Great Basin Star Train

Any stargazing train worth its salt requires one thing: a dark sky. The Star Train resoundingly checks that box, traveling through a part of eastern Nevada that is one of the least-populated places in the lower 48.

Run by the Nevada Northern Railway in partnership with nearby Great Basin National Park, the train departs the historic East Ely Depot, in Ely, Nev., early enough in the evening to catch the sunset over the Steptoe Valley, and then cruises through darkening skies to its destination: a remote corner of the desert appropriately called Star Flat, where a stargazing platform outfitted with telescopes awaits. There, riders disembark (equipped with red-light necklaces to help preserve their night vision) and take turns viewing the cosmos, guided by professional astronomers. (Last year’s onboard stargazing guides came from Caltech; in previous seasons, the National Park Service’s Dark Rangers, who specialize in night-sky activities, accompanied trips.)

The Star Train makes its two-and-a-half-hour round-trip journey most Friday evenings between mid-May and mid-September, and tickets ($65 for adults) can sell out almost a year in advance — though members of the Nevada Northern Railway Museum get early access. Alternatively, the railroad’s more frequent Sunset, Stars and Champagne excursions trade telescopes for desert sundowners but feature the same expert stargazers and the same Nevada night sky, which is often dark enough to see the Milky Way with the naked eye.

New Mexico

The Stargazer

While plenty of heritage railroads across the United States offer twilight rides and nighttime excursions, at the moment there’s only one other dedicated, regularly scheduled stargazing train in North America besides the Star Train: the Stargazer, operated by Sky Railway, in Santa Fe, N.M.

Much like its Nevada counterpart, the Stargazer makes a two-and-a-half-hour round trip through dark-sky country, though in this case, the journey really is the destination, because it doesn’t make any stops. More of a rolling night-sky revue, the Stargazer features live music and professional astronomers who share their celestial knowledge and stories as the train rumbles into the vast Galisteo Basin south of Santa Fe. Sky Railway’s colorfully painted trains feature heated, enclosed passenger cars to stave off the evening chill and flatbed cars open to the night sky.

Departing from the Santa Fe Depot downtown, the train normally runs once a month (adult tickets from $139, including a champagne welcome toast). Sky Railway also occasionally schedules excursions for special celestial events.

New Zealand

Matariki Rail Experience

With its alpine landscapes and rugged coastline, New Zealand’s South Island is practically tailor-made for scenic daytime train journeys. But when night falls, the sparsely populated island — home to the Southern Hemisphere’s largest International Dark Sky Reserve — is heaven for stargazers, too.

This year, Great Journeys New Zealand, which operates the country’s tourist-centric long-distance trains, is offering a special nighttime run of the Coastal Pacific, whose route skirts the South Island’s northeastern coast. Timed to Matariki, the Maori new year, which is heralded by the first rising of the Pleiades star cluster, the eight-hour round trip from Christchurch is a cultural and astronomical celebration.

After the first half of a four-course onboard dinner, the train arrives in Kaikoura, in dark-sky country, for a guided stargazing stop with a range of telescopes — and fire pits and a night market. (The rain plan involves a virtual stargazing session at the local museum using virtual reality headsets.) Dinner resumes back on the train as it returns to Christchurch. This is a strictly limited engagement, on the rails for one night only: July 11, for 499 New Zealand dollars, about $295, per person.

In the far northern reaches of Norway, inside the Arctic Circle, you can ride a train that chases another wonder of the night sky: the aurora borealis. Twice a week from October to March, the Northern Lights Train takes its riders into the dark polar night in pursuit of the aurora’s celestial light show.

From the remote town of Narvik, the train travels along the Ofoten Railway, the northernmost passenger rail line in Western Europe. The destination on this three-hour round-trip excursion (1,495 kroner, or about $160) is Katterat, a mountain village accessible only by rail and free of light pollution, making it an ideal place to spot the aurora. At the Katterat station, local guides and a campfire cookout await, as does a lavvu, the traditional tent used by the Sami people of northern Scandinavia, offering a respite from the cold (as well as hot drinks and an open fire for roasting sausages).

And aboard the train, the lights stay off, which means that on a clear night, you might even catch the northern lights on the way there and back.

Leave it to Japan to take the stargazing train to another level.

The High Rail 1375 train — so named because it runs along Japan’s highest-elevation railway line (the high point is 1,375 meters, or roughly 4,500 feet, above sea level) — is one of JR East’s deliberately unhurried Joyful Trains, which the railway company describes as “not only a means of transportation, but also a package of various pleasures.” This astronomy-themed train certainly packs plenty of joy into its two cars, with seat upholstery inspired by constellations, a snack bar, a souvenir shop and a planetarium car with a library of astronomy books and images of the night sky projected onto its domed ceiling.

The train makes two daytime runs along the mountainous Koumi Line, taking a little over two hours to travel between Kobuchizawa (accessible by express train from Tokyo) and Komoro. But the main event is the High Rail Hoshizora (“Starry Sky”) evening trip, which includes an extended stop at Nobeyama Station (the highest in the country) for a guided stargazing session. A one-way ride on High Rail 1375, which runs on weekends and occasional weekdays, requires a seat reservation if you’re traveling on a Japan Rail pass, or a stand-alone ticket plus seat reservation (2,440 yen, or about $15). And remember to preorder a special “Starry Sky” bento box.

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Science

A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry from the Cosmic Edge

Published

16 hours ago

May 13, 2026

Press Room

A Physicist Who Thinks in Poetry from the Cosmic Edge

Much of the praise for Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s debut book in 2021, “The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey Into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred,” lauded the way she used personal experiences in physics to discuss the social and political inequities that exist alongside scientific breakthroughs.

“It contains the narrative of dreams deferred,” Dr. Prescod-Weinstein, a physicist at the University of New Hampshire, explained in April at a bookstore in Chicago. But its very existence, she said, also “represented a dream deferred, because that was not the dream of what my first book was going to be.”

Her second book reclaims that dream. Released on April 7, “The Edge of Space-Time: Particles, Poetry, and the Cosmic Dream Boogie” is less pain and more play, a homage to the big questions that made Dr. Prescod-Weinstein want to become a physicist in the first place. She begins the book by asserting that it is humanity’s duty to uncover and share the story of our universe. Her latest offering toward that duty is a journey through physics that is tightly bound to her own cultural roots.

In the midst of a multicity book tour, Dr. Prescod-Weinstein spoke with The New York Times about guiding readers through the cosmos from her own point of view and about some of the art, poetry and literature she drew on to shape that journey. This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Why include so many references to poetry in a book about physics?

I knew poetry before I knew physics. It was part of my upbringing. I loved A.A. Milne’s “Now We Are Six” and Edward Lear’s “Nonsense Limericks.” Both of my books draw their subtitles from Langston Hughes’s “Montage of a Dream Deferred.”

Adrienne Rich’s poem “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” became a guiding light for how my work would move in the world. It also opened up for me that I need language. That’s true among physicists. Even an equation is a sentence; even an equation is telling a story.

As physicists, we’re always working in language to connect what we learn with what we know. Poetry is one of the first places that my brain goes to draw those links. Language, as it moves in my brain, is often in Hughes and Rich and Shakespeare. Those are the lines that flicker up for me.

What if we got away from the argument that doing cosmology and particle physics is practical or materially valuable? Then we have to accept that we’re like the poets. What we do is important culturally in the same way poetry is. A piece of this book is me saying there is value in banding with the poets, and fighting for the value of being curious and trying to articulate the world with whatever tools are available to us. Not for the purposes of selling something, but for the purpose of fulfilling our humanity.

Another theme throughout the book is the story of Lewis Carroll’s Alice and her adventures in Wonderland.

Being a science adviser on future installments in The Legendborn Cycle, a fantasy series written by Tracy Deonn, is one reason Alice is in my book. It has allowed me to be open to the playful side that physics, as a Black queer person, can take from you. I wanted the book to be whimsical, because that’s who I was when I first arrived in physics, and that’s who I want to be when I die.

Part of the call of quantum physics is to change what our sense and sensibility are. When you look at the world through this framework — like the idea that particles have spin but don’t really spin — it sounds like nonsense. Except that’s literally how the universe works. Physics is our “through the looking glass.” It’s real.

Your first chapter invites readers to reflect on the metaphors used to describe the universe, like the “fabric” of space-time or electromagnetic “fields.” Why open in this way?

A lot of books about quantum physics start with its history. I wanted as much as possible not to just do that. I had actually planned to start it with the Stern-Gerlach experiment of 1922. But then I read an essay by the poet Natasha Trethewey about abiding metaphors and started to ask myself what the abiding metaphors of my physics training were.

We don’t ever take time in our classes to ask, “What do we mean when we say ‘space’? What do we mean when we say ‘space-time’?” There are these metaphysical questions that I often told myself were for the philosophers. This book was me letting myself think of them as physics.

One metaphor you invoke is the “edge” — not only the edge of the universe and of scientists’ understanding, but also existing at the edge of certain identities.

In “Disordered Cosmos,” I talked a lot about being at the margin and looking toward the center. With “The Edge of Space-Time,” I’m choosing to make the margin the center of the story. Part of that was me fully embracing what makes me the physicist I am. I’m an L.A. Dodgers fan. I love “Alice in Wonderland.” I love “Star Trek.” There’s lots of all of that in the book.

Picking a metaphor is a culturally situated decision. I wrote a line that says black holes are the best laid edges in the universe. I did, at some point, think that only some people were going to get this. But for people who don’t understand the reference to Black hairstyles, the sentence is still legible. And for those who do, it will feel like we just had an in-group moment. Anyone who thinks about laying their edges deserves to have an in-group moment in a physics book. Because we are physics, too.

Black students are often told that if you want to be a physicist, then you will make yourself as close to such-and-such mold as possible. At a young age, we have this understanding that whiteness and science are associated with each other, but we are also witnessing in ourselves that this can’t be entirely correct. There’s this narration of, “Well, sure, you can be Black in physics, but that means you have to acclimate to the ‘in physics’ part, and never that physics has to acclimate to the Black part.”

I use the example of rapper Big K.R.I.T.’s song “My Sub Pt. 3 (Big Bang),” in which someone tries to wire up subwoofers in his car but fries the wires because he doesn’t ground them properly. I don’t know if Big K.R.I.T. would think of this as a science story, but I think we should learn to read it as one. Not to contain it in science, but to say it overlaps there. This can be a rap song. It can be about the cultural significance of subwoofers and the Big Bang as a metaphor for the beat. And it can also be about cosmology and about how everybody who wires up cars or does this kind of work is a scientist, too.

How do you want readers to approach this book?

There is this feeling that you’re supposed to read a book like this and walk away an expert. That’s actually not the point of this book at all. The point is to wander through physics. Even if math terrifies you, you are entitled to spend some time with it.

And so here, I have made you a book with a bunch of tidbits on the oddities of the universe. The universe is stranger and more queer and more wonderful and more full of possibility than whatever limitations you might be experiencing right now. Physics challenges what we are told are social norms. For example, non-trinary neutrinos are fundamental to our standard model of physics.

“Non-trinary,” as in they shift between three different forms.

Non-trinary is natural. It’s such a challenge to the current anti-trans rhetoric that says people can only ever be one thing.

I don’t need my book to be the most important thing that someone reads. But I want it to be a source of hope. If it reminds you that, as my mom says, the universe is bigger than the bad things that are happening to us, then that’s all you need to remember. I’m good with that.

Science

Footage shows Central Valley dairy workers kicking young calves, pulling them with pliers

Published

1 day ago

May 13, 2026

Press Room

Footage shows Central Valley dairy workers kicking young calves, pulling them with pliers

In late February, animal rights activists flew a drone over a calf ranch in the Central Valley and watched as workers kicked and punched the animals.

For the record:

7:15 p.m. May 12, 2026This article has been updated to reflect that no calves from Agresti Calf Ranch have ever gone on to be used for Clover Sonoma milk supplies, and the calf ranch opened only in 2025. In additional comments, Clover Sonoma also said in the future, no animals from Agresti Calf Ranch will be part of its supply.

Footage reviewed by The Times shows a worker pulling a calf by the nose with pliers.

It shows two workers removing the budding horns of a calf with a hot iron. While one held the frightened animal’s head, the other — wearing a sweatshirt with an image of the Virgin Mary — applied the iron to a horn. After a puff of smoke, the calf fell to its side, appearing motionless.

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Both male and female calves produce horns. To prevent injury to the animals and their handlers, these are commonly removed. Humane guidelines require anesthesia.

The footage was collected by the group Direct Action Everywhere, known for tactics including releasing beagles from medical breeding facilities and abused calves from farms. It was shot at the Agresti Calf Ranch in Ceres, near Modesto, which is certified by the American Humane Society for its ethical treatment of animals. The workers could not be reached for comment. One was subsequently terminated, the Humane Society said.

The Agresti Calf Ranch opened in 2025 and is operated by the owners of Double D Dairy, just up the road. Double D Dairy owns more than 10,000 cows across several operations.

The owner of Double D, Dominic Assali, declined to answer questions in person. A phone number for the dairy online is disconnected. In response to an email to his personal account, Assali said, “Animal welfare and safety are incredibly important to us, and we have a zero-tolerance policy for any mistreatment.

“We’ll always take immediate, thorough action to address any operational issues, as we have in this instance,” the email said.

The American Humane Society is a 150-year-old nonprofit focused on animal welfare. Among other things, it certifies animal safety on farms as well as on movie sets. In a statement, it said only 10% of animals raised on farms in the U.S. are certified as humanely treated.

Assali is the grandson of the farm’s founders, Harold and Marlene Agresti. He is a board member of Western United Dairies, the largest dairy trade group in California.

The mistreatment captured on video has also created a headache for a prominent California sustainable milk brand, Clover Sonoma, based in Sonoma County.

It gets 10% to 15% of its milk from Double D, and Assali and his family are featured on Clover Sonoma’s website. No calves from Agresti Calf Ranch have ever gone on to be used in Clover Sonoma milk supplies, the company said in a statement. It’s unclear whether the abused calves were being raised for beef or dairy.

A Clover Sonoma sign hung outside the main dairy complex on a recent visit.

Clover Sonoma markets its milk, yogurt and cheese products as humanely sourced and environmentally sound. It was the first dairy company to receive a cruelty-free certification from the American Humane Society in 2000. The website also features a “Our Promise” page, which states the company demands “the humane treatment of animals.”

“We were deeply concerned by the reported mistreatment of some cows captured on video at Agresti Calf Ranch during a separate cow operation,” the company said in an email.

“The rough handling shown at Agresti Calf Ranch is contrary and inconsistent with the humane practices we have fostered for decades and which we demand of all our suppliers.”

Clover Sonoma said it suspended business with Double D as soon as it became aware of the incidents and began “a rigorous audit,” which just ended.

“Clover and the American Humane Society have concluded that the mistreatment was an isolated issue, not systemic or reflective of Agresti Calf Ranch’s personnel. Corrections have been made, including the termination of the employee in the video. As such, we are comfortable reinstating the milk from Double D Dairy.”

After this story published, Clover went further and said a condition of Double D’s reinstatement will be that no animals from Agresti Calf Ranch will be part of Clover’s dairy supply.

A statement from the Humane Society said Clover Sonoma is working with Double D to strengthen its whistleblower policy and training, and has “reiterated its commitment to ongoing independent, third-party audits,” with both announced and unannounced visits.

Clover Sonoma mainly buys and processes milk from dairies in verdant Sonoma County, as the company’s marketing suggests. Double D Dairy is one of its few suppliers in the Central Valley, which is associated more with industrial-scale agriculture.

On a recent weekday, the calf ranch and dairy farm were visible from a public road. Holstein calves, a popular dairy breed, could be seen in cages through small trees in front of the enclosures. The sound of mooing and a pressure washer could be heard. The smell of manure and dirt wafted in the humid air.

Most dairy companies remove calves from their mothers after birth, raising them separately so they don’t take the mother’s commercially valuable milk. Some dairy farms send calves out to third-party calf ranches for rearing. Others raise them on-site. Female calves are typically raised to become milk cows. Male calves are sent away to become beef or other meat-based products, such as pet food.

A 2025 State Water Board document shows the farm houses an average of 700 calves at any one time, with a maximum 1,400.

The Direct Action Everywhere activists were recently on a public road near Double D’s main farm, flying a drone over the property. Within 30 minutes of their arrival, seven Stanislaus County sheriff’s vehicles arrived and surrounded the activists.

A heavily armed officer asked to see the drone pilot’s Federal Aviation Administration license, which he provided. After confirming it was valid, a sheriff’s deputy — one of nine at the scene — told the activists they could remain on the road but could not trespass.

Asked about the heavy response, a deputy said there had been several recent violent incidents from animal rights groups at the site, and mentioned the groups had sent in “busloads” of activists.

The Times reached out to the Sheriff’s Office to get more details about those events but did not get a response.

Temple Grandin, author and professor of livestock medicine at Colorado State University, said that punching and kicking livestock is considered abusive.

An expert in livestock welfare, she said that handlers can tap, push and nudge animals. But if the level of force goes beyond what could bend the side of a cardboard box, “it’s abuse. Period.”

She said the calves’ reaction to the hot iron indicates that pain medication, such as lidocaine, was not applied before the procedure. Double D did not respond to a question about whether medication was given before the procedure.