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Dire Dairy · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Welcome to Aaron Nke's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of
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  Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and Grimm and Mild. Our world is full of
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  Speaker 1: the unexplainable, and if history is an open book, all
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  Speaker 1: of these amazing tales are right there on display, just
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  Speaker 1: waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities.
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  Speaker 1: On Christmas Eve of nineteen seventy one, seventeen year old
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  Speaker 1: Juliana Kopka took her seat next to her mother on
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  Speaker 1: Lansa flight five oh eight. She figured it would be
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  Speaker 1: a routine flight once she had done a dozen times before,
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  Speaker 1: But just a few hours later, she was free falling
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  Speaker 1: through the sky, about to land in the middle of
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  Speaker 1: the world's densest jungle, completely alone. If anyone was going
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  Speaker 1: to survive through the Amazon, it was Juliana Kopka. Daughter
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  Speaker 1: of two German zoologists, she had spent most of her
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  Speaker 1: childhood seeing her parents' work at the Lima Museum of
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  Speaker 1: Natural History. When she was just fourteen years old, she
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  Speaker 1: accompanied her parents to establish a research station inside the Amazon.
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  Speaker 1: Her parents made sure that she was well versed in biology, zoology, ecology,
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  Speaker 1: and most importantly, the skills to survive the jungle. She'd
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  Speaker 1: returned to Lima to finish school, and initially she and
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  Speaker 1: her mother were planning to return to the research station
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  Speaker 1: on December nineteenth or twentieth, but Juliana insisted she wanted
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  Speaker 1: to attend her graduation ceremony on December twenty third, leaving
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  Speaker 1: them scrambling to book a flight home on Christmas Eve.
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  Speaker 1: The Peruvian airline Lanza had a reputation for old and
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  Speaker 1: malfunctioning planes, and Juliana's father begged them to avoid flying
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  Speaker 1: on it, but since it was the only flight left
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  Speaker 1: on Christmas Eve, they booked their tickets for Lanza flight
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  Speaker 1: five oh eight. Things began okay, but midway through the flight,
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  Speaker 1: the plane flew into a thunderstorm. Lightning struck its right wing,
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  Speaker 1: igniting a fuel tank. The plane exploded in midair, ripping
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  Speaker 1: apart over the rainforest. In an instant, Juliana was falling
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  Speaker 1: ten thousand feet to the ground, still strapped into a
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  Speaker 1: row of seats. Somehow, though miraculously, she survived the fall.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps it was the updraft from the storm, or the
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  Speaker 1: surface area of the seats slowing her descent. Maybe it
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  Speaker 1: was even the dense jungle canopy that broke her fall
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  Speaker 1: before she hit the ground. Either way, Juliana was still
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  Speaker 1: alive after plummeting nearly two miles to the Earth's surface,
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  Speaker 1: but now she had to stay that way. Juliana had
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  Speaker 1: blacked out during the fall, but came to on the
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  Speaker 1: forest floor. She had a broken collarbone, a swollen eye,
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  Speaker 1: a deep gash on her arm, and a concussion. She
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  Speaker 1: had lost one of her shoes and only wore a
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  Speaker 1: thin cotton dress. She had no food except for a
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  Speaker 1: bag of candy from the plane, but she knew that
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  Speaker 1: if she wanted to make it out of this she
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  Speaker 1: had to find help. Well. She remembered her father's advice
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  Speaker 1: follow water. People always live near water, so when she
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  Speaker 1: found a creek in the jungle, she began treking down it.
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  Speaker 1: She kept walking for ten days. She was constantly worried
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  Speaker 1: about animals, jaguars, scorpions, poisonous insects, all of which she
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  Speaker 1: could barely see because she had lost her glasses. As well.
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  Speaker 1: She was repeatedly soaked by the December rains and attacked
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  Speaker 1: by mosquitoes. Botflies began to infest the open wound on
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  Speaker 1: her arm. But despite all of this, she kept moving forward. Finally,
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  Speaker 1: on January third of nineteen seventy two, she found a
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  Speaker 1: small boat and a hut. A few hours later, local
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  Speaker 1: lumberjacks arrived at the encampment. Shocked at her condition, they
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  Speaker 1: cleaned her wounds and placed her in a canoe, and
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  Speaker 1: then they paddled her eleven more hours down the river
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  Speaker 1: to a settlement, where finally a helicopter was able to
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  Speaker 1: airlift her to the hospital. Ninety two people were flying
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  Speaker 1: on Lanza flight five oh eight. It's estimated that as
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  Speaker 1: many as fourteen survived the crash but died from their
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  Speaker 1: injuries in the jungle. Only one person survived, Juliana Kopka.
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  Speaker 1: Juliana recovered and led authorities back to the crash site.
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  Speaker 1: Just a few days later, she finished school and eventually
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  Speaker 1: returned to the rainforest to study zoology, just like her parents,
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  Speaker 1: specializing in bats. Her story would have been incredible enough
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  Speaker 1: if it ended there, but there was one more twist
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  Speaker 1: of fate that Flight five oweight had to offer. You see,
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  Speaker 1: in the nineteen nineties, German director Werner Herzog reached out
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  Speaker 1: to Juliana asking to make a documentary about her. In
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  Speaker 1: the years since the crash. Dozens of journalists and filmmakers
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  Speaker 1: had approached her with a similar request, and normally she
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  Speaker 1: brushed off these messages, but in Werner's case, she listened
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  Speaker 1: because Werner Herzog was supposed to be on flight five
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  Speaker 1: oh eeight with her in nineteen seventy one. Werner had
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  Speaker 1: been scouting locations in the Peruvian Amazon for his film
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  Speaker 1: agire The Wrath of God. He was supposed to take
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  Speaker 1: LANSA flight five oh eight that Christmas Eve, but a
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  Speaker 1: conflict caused him to reschedule his flight. In the documentary
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  Speaker 1: that he made, called Wings of Hope, Juliana told her
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  Speaker 1: own story while leading Werner to the crash site. She
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  Speaker 1: felt making the documentary was therapeutic, a way to put
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  Speaker 1: to rest some of the trauma that had haunted her
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  Speaker 1: for years. Juliana Kapka didn't just survive her ordeal. She thrived,
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  Speaker 1: and even after falling nearly two miles through the air,
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  Speaker 1: she somehow landed on her own two feet. Looking back
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  Speaker 1: on the news of the past year, it seems that
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people have subscribed to the unusual belief
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  Speaker 1: that we can gauge the state of the economy based
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  Speaker 1: on the price of eggs. It's difficult to say exactly
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  Speaker 1: when this started, but it certainly sounds logical right. Eggs are,
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  Speaker 1: after all, one of the most ubiquitous grocery propt the
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  Speaker 1: bedrock of baking, breakfasts and batter the world over, and
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  Speaker 1: when dairy prices rise, the average person can feel the
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  Speaker 1: strain acutely, from the farmers who raised the chickens to
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  Speaker 1: the individuals who were just trying to shop for their family.
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  Speaker 1: So with that in mind, I'd like to tell you
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  Speaker 1: a story of what happens when dairy products can turn
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  Speaker 1: into their own form of natural disaster. It started with
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  Speaker 1: an economic issue and became a local news crisis. It
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  Speaker 1: was the spring of nineteen ninety one. For the previous
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  Speaker 1: fifteen years, Since nineteen seventy four, the United States government
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  Speaker 1: had been purchasing dairy products from farmers in an effort
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  Speaker 1: to keep prices stable. This ensured that the US had
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  Speaker 1: an enormous surplus of butter and cheese, all stored in
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  Speaker 1: warehouses around the country. This was a little inconvenient, but
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  Speaker 1: it was thoroughly ignorable as far as problems go. One
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  Speaker 1: such complex was on Cottage Grove Road in Madison, Wisconsin.
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  Speaker 1: It was half a million square feet, storing up to
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  Speaker 1: fifteen million pounds of surplus butter, cheese, hams, and Oscar
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  Speaker 1: Meyer sausages would also be stored at this facility in
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  Speaker 1: significantly smaller quantities. At around three pm on May third,
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  Speaker 1: there were about twenty five people working in this warehouse
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  Speaker 1: when someone smelled smoke. The source was a forklift malfunction
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  Speaker 1: whose battery sparked and ignited a fire inside the temperature
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  Speaker 1: controlled building. The warehouse's insulation was extremely flammable, as was
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  Speaker 1: the butter being stored within it. Under intense heat, butter
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  Speaker 1: will melt and then burn and then catch fire, and
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  Speaker 1: it doesn't burn like coal or wood. It burns more
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  Speaker 1: like grease. So the entire building was a flame. Firefighters
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  Speaker 1: were on the scene immediately. They poured thousands of gallons
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  Speaker 1: of water on the fire, which would slow down the
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  Speaker 1: flame slightly, but not put them out altogether. Water only
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  Speaker 1: spread the melted butter around. After a few hours, the
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  Speaker 1: walls of the warehouse began to give way. The fire
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  Speaker 1: spread to a second building, and the first fully collapsed,
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  Speaker 1: leashing a wave of butter, cream and melted cheese onto
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  Speaker 1: the streets of Madison. The currents of dairy made it
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  Speaker 1: impossible for fire trucks to maneuver, so in order to
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  Speaker 1: fight the flames, firemen had to wade through a cholesterol
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  Speaker 1: dense river that was almost five feet deep in places.
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  Speaker 1: More frightening though, the fire was creeping closer to the
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  Speaker 1: factories an hydrous ammonia tanks, and if these tanks burst,
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  Speaker 1: it would release a toxic gas into the city. Residents
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  Speaker 1: that lived within half a mile radius of the factory
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  Speaker 1: were prompted to evacuate. Fortunately, though, the firefighters were able
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  Speaker 1: to keep the flames away from the tanks. Within twenty hours,
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  Speaker 1: the fire was contained, but the battle was far from over.
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  Speaker 1: You see, the butter and cheese flood was ongoing, putting
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  Speaker 1: the city's fresh water supplies at risk as well as
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  Speaker 1: the surrounding natural environment. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
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  Speaker 1: joined the fire Department's effort to stem the tide, erecting
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  Speaker 1: levees and dams to keep the butter, cheese, and assorted
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  Speaker 1: meats from running into nearby lakes and streams. Public Works
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  Speaker 1: dug a pond for the runoff, and then quickly realized
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  Speaker 1: they had to dig a second one before it completely
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  Speaker 1: filled with butter. Heck, they had to bring in pumps
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  Speaker 1: to help divert thirteen million gallons of melted butter mixed
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  Speaker 1: with water and other runoff from the fire. In the end,
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  Speaker 1: they had to use construction vehicles to dump sand on
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  Speaker 1: the burning butter in order to fully put out the flames,
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  Speaker 1: and the fire was officially declared out on May eleventh,
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  Speaker 1: eight days after it had begun. Clearing the surrounding streets, however,
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  Speaker 1: took an extra week. The event became known as the
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  Speaker 1: Great Wisconsin Butter Fire. It was the most costly fire
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  Speaker 1: in the state's history, causing seven point five million dollars
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  Speaker 1: in property damage, destroyed seventy million dollars worth of food products,
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  Speaker 1: and an extra one million dollars in clean up expenses,
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  Speaker 1: which was ironic since it all started because the US
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  Speaker 1: government wanted to avoid a financial crisis. It's a delicious
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  Speaker 1: cautionary tail. When you keep way too much butter near
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  Speaker 1: flammable materials, your city might become toast. I hope you've
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  Speaker 1: enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities. Subscribe
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  Speaker 1: for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about the
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  Speaker 1: show by visiting curiosities podcast dot com. The show was
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  Speaker 1: created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership with how Stuff Works.
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  Speaker 1: I make another award winning show called Lore, which is
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  Speaker 1: a podcast, book series, and television show and you can
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  Speaker 1: learn all about it over at Theworldoflore dot com. And
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  Speaker 1: until next time, stay curious.