99% Invisible - 371- Dead Cars

Episode Date: September 18, 2019

Everything in Bethel, Alaska comes in by cargo plane or barge, and even when something stops working, it’s often too expensive and too inconvenient to get it out again. So junk accumulates. Diane McEachern has been a resident of Bethel for about 20 years, and she’s made it her personal mission to count every single dead car in the city. Dead cars are the most visible manifestation of the town’s junk problem. You see them everywhere -- broken down, abandoned, left to rust and rot out in the elements. Dead Cars Plus, a preview of Radiotopia’s newest series Passenger List. Subscribe!

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. In Southwest Alaska, two big rivers flow across the subartic Tundra, emptying into the barren sea. Together, the rivers create the Yukon Cuscoquem Delta, an area the size of the state of Illinois. Scattered along the rivers and coast, are 56 Alaska native tribes in communities of mostly a few hundred people. The Tunger River Delta is a wetland, with ponds scattered in every direction and streams and tributaries braiding and weaving between them. That's reporter Anna Rose MacArthur, who lives in the Waikai Delta.

From an airplane, it's hard to tell if there's more water or land below. It's really beautiful. The hub of this region is the city of Bethel, population 6,500. The town is the economic and bureaucratic center of the Delta. It's the place people fly into for medical care, shopping, and work. And the reason they fly is because the entire region is off the road system. That means that while there are roads within communities, there are no roads connecting towns like Bethel to the outside. The land is too boggy to support them.

The interstates and highways that link most towns and cities in North America don't exist here. The only way in or out of any of the communities in the region, including Bethel, is by plane or boat. In winter, you can also snowmobile or drive a truck along the frozen river, which we call the ice highway. And that presents some interesting challenges when it comes to waste. Because pretty much everything that gets imported into Bethel ultimately stays in Bethel. It comes in by cargo plane or barge,

and even when something stops working, it's often too expensive and too inconvenient to get it out again. In other places in the United States, trash is thrown away, but in a town scratch from the tundra, unconnected by roads, there is no away. There is only here.

And so junk slowly accumulates. People's yards fill with wooden pallets, fishing boobies, oil drums, and tarps with mysterious stuff underneath. It's a common sight throughout rural Alaska. And there's no social stigma attached. No neighborhood committee policing acceptable law into court. Okay.

This is rolling. Oh, it is, okay. Other people might not see all this junk as a problem, but then there's Diane McAcrane. She's my roommate. She's lived in Bethel for more than 20 years, and she's a very self-motivated person, prone to eccentric obsessions and quests. Now, okay, should I put her in the house

because she might do some dog barking? Yeah, that'll be good. Let me do that. Diane has biked 2,000 miles solo across the United States. Twice. She's been arrested for political activism and has been known to stick anti-war flyers between cans

of soup and cereal boxes at the grocery store. She also curates a photo collection of Bethel's overflowing dumpsters that she finds amusing. We have to decide the first place. And about a year ago, her eccentric obsession fixated on something that many people don't notice for the same reason that fish don't notice water. Diane became obsessed with the most visible manifestation

of the town's junk problem, the dead cars. If you care to notice, you see them everywhere, broken down, abandoned, left to rust, and rot out in the elements. The kinds of areas that dead cars get located, homes, random parking lots, totally offbeat locations, places of business. Dead cars line the sides of the roads.

They fill people's yards and sit scattered throughout public parking lots. And Diane has decided she wants to count them all. So she's divided Bethel into sections. Over the course of a year, she's methodically checked every street parking lot in yard. And I've been tacking along. What the clicking began? She bought one of those handheld clickers, a little sober one, like the kind used to count the number of people attending events,

or the count anything, really. So there's the SUV, an SUV next to it. Ford, Ford, Ford. Okay. We're up to 67 and we have not hit a neighborhood yet. So. Diane sees the dead cars as a symptom of something bigger. About 100 vehicles were taken to the Bethel landfill last year.

Meanwhile, about 300 vehicles were barged into town. All these cars are coming in, but they're not going out, and they're piling up around us. We're not going to get away with this forever. I mean, there's a price to be paid for this kind of materialism of which I'm part of, so I'm not like saying I'm exempt because I'm not. I give it a lot of thought, though.

And how can we organize ourselves to handle this differently? It's sort of a burning question for me. Now that red truck doesn't look right, does it? Click. I love living in Bethel. I love its small city intimacy. I love that I can walk in any direction in a couple miles, pitch a tent in the Tundra wilderness. I love that a two-minute stop is considered a traffic jam. I love fishing for salmon in the summer, picking wild berries in the fall, and cheering for sled dog races in the winter. But this town, it isn't for everyone. Just go to the airport and

you'll see. Okay, so here we are. We're at the lot across from the main terminal. The Bethel Airport is where the town's dead car problem is most apparent. It's like a graveyard of rusting vehicles. There are rumors the cars were left by people who just drove to the airport, got on a plane, and never looked back. And it's so bad, you can almost never find a parking space. This one is dead and double-part.

That's like a middle finger to the town. It's like, I'm going to leave this car here, and I'm going to double-part. I'm going to take up two spaces while I do it. And look at the, look at the body. That body is excellent. The Alaska Department of Transportation oversees the Bethel Airport and between keeping snow off the runways and filling potholes, removing abandoned cars hasn't been their priority, which means the cars keep accumulating and now they're a major headache.

Okay, first of all, with the airport here in Bethel, have you been out to Bethel and seen the layout? It's been a long time, but yes, I have been out there. Shannon McCarthy is a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Transportation. If it is becomes obvious to us that a car has been abandoned, and often times you'll see lots of snow on it, or lots of dust on it. That kind of thing, they are required to post it for removal for 30 days.

And then once the 30 days has passed, we actually have to bring them to our shop and we have to prepare them for disposal. That means draining the fluids, removing the battery, and taking the vehicle to the dump. That's the proper way to dispose of a car in Bethel. It costs the state $50 for each car they have to deal with because the owners are nowhere to be found. You know, we do try to make contact, but oftentimes if someone is disposing of a vehicle clandestinely, if you will, they oftentimes don't leave good contact information.

The contact information no longer is valid. So unfortunately, we're not able to recoup those costs very frequently. Oh my. Just so you know, we're up to 188 cars. We haven't even... What? We haven't even...

Still haven't really scratched the surface of Bethel. Let's go over the signs again, like the tell-tale signs that distinguish the car. There's grass growing up around the tires, and the grass is tall enough that it took a while for the grass to begin growing. Of course the real obvious pancake tires, tires that are completely off the rim, the windows are all broken out and then maybe I know that that car has never moved for a year. Or it's sunk into the dirt.

Yeah, it started to sink into earth itself. Well, that's the sad thing. Oh, look at that beautiful Chevy. That beautiful color. Not all dead cars in Bethel are abandoned and left for someone else to deal with, like the ones at the airport. Some are carefully curated, meant to be used for a greater purpose in the future. Like the cars beside Aggie Gregory's house.

Okay, so will you tell me the story about these cars in the yard? There's three that are just sitting on our property and a couple of them are the same and so we use one for parts for the other one. Dead cars are a common feature in yards here because cannibalizing parts to fix other vehicles happens all the time. And so wait, is that the the one that you're supposed to fix up? The silver one? We're supposed to, but I don't know if that's going to ever happen. If you don't get it fixed up how long? Do you think it's going to sit there? That's a good question. Aggie says that they eventually want to get rid of the cars so they have

room to park their old boat because they plan to get a new boat and strip the old one for parts. They have two snowmobiles for the same reason. Some parts are harder to get, I guess, and it costs money to ship in, so why not keep them and use them? Rural Alaska is famous for its scrappy resourcefulness. You can't live in a place that's so remote where things take so long to get and cost so much money without creativity. People tend to hold on to their stuff for a long time, even broken stuff.

Very little gets thrown away, usually if it's good enough we'll reuse. David Ficka is helping to repair a truck that belongs to Aggie and her husband. David is from Marshall, a small village north of Bethel on the Yukon River. It's a mechanical world, I'm sure. A lot of snow machines, four wheelers, we kind of grow up around it. And most of the guys will become natural to add it to just start taking things apart and then they have to go back together. Yeah. David has just finished changing the ball joints on his friend's O2 Dodge Dakota truck. They're the pivots between the wheels and the suspension.

Usually, these joints would last about 10 years, but in Bethel, it's more like two. That's because the roads here are notoriously bad. Sometimes, it seems like there's more pothole than road. And warming winters have made them even worse. Instead of the temperature dropping and staying below freezing, it goes up and down. As the ice melts, water gets into all the nooks and crannies of the road. When it re-freezes, it expands, making the cracks bigger and bigger. The infrastructure of the outside, it arrived through colonization, and it doesn't work so well here.

Over time, the ground has frozen and thawed so many times that the pavement has created these giant heaths. It's like a rollercoaster ride, fun on a bike, but hard on a car. It's a nice sound effect to have a few quiet clicks. Because by now the audience knows what it's all about. Let me ask these girls. Oh no, okay. Hey, does that green car work?

Does that green car work? I don't think so. Girl shake hands right now. I think so. Look at the think so. Girl shake out of the house. I think so. Look at the growth. Look at the growth under there. So I'm at 869. Before cars die and end up abandoned on the side of the road

or in someone's yard, they typically cycle through a few owners, deteriorating as they pass from one person to the next. A friend of mine once bought a Jeep for $500 that couldn't reverse. We call cars like these Bethel-Beaters. I personally have decided to forego a beater in favor of biking and taking taxis, because this land of abandoned vehicles also has a thriving cab industry. Cubs are a critical shared resource. They're heavily relied upon by the constant influx of

travelers from nearby villages. Once people arrive by plane or boat for their shopping appointments and business, they need a way to get around. And so you see cabs everywhere. In fact, Manhattan isn't the cab capital of the US. Bethel is. Procapita, anyway. So yes, per capita, Bethel has the most cabs in the United States, but there's 59. 59 cabs total in Bethel.

That means there's one cab for every 110 people. Naim Shabani is the co-owner of Bethel's largest cab company, Cusco Cab. We average a call every 45 seconds. The busiest times are mornings when people are getting to work, kids are getting to school, and people are going to the airport. Then later in the day, when people get off work, and finally at night, between Bingo and Dane and the grocery stores closing. On average a cab in Bethel does 200 miles a day, 200 miles a day, or about

6,000 miles a month, that is the average odometer reading at the end of the ship for a cab in Bethel. All that driving on only 36 miles of road, Nyeem says it's fun. Most rides are shared and there are a lot of regular customers that many drivers have been driving for years. You get to catch up with them and their life and vice versa so the day does go by rather quickly. It's kind of like being an elevator for 12 hours. Even people who live in the YK Delta and have their own vehicles regularly use caps. Like when the roads are icy and vehicle owners

don't want to risk their cars sliding into a ditch. Why take the chance with your own vehicle when you can just take one of name's taxis? Of course, that means name's taxis take a beating. He says they last on average three years. I like to think of some vehicles in Bethel as like burner cell phones where you buy it until the minutes run out and then you toss it out and go get another one. Diane has owned three cars in Bethel.

One day when we were out counting we found her first one. Oh, oh, oh my gosh. Oh, oh my gosh. That was my first Bethel car! That was my first car in Bethel and it's got the Occupy the Tundra sticker. Oh my gosh. Occupy the Tundra was a movement of one, started by Diane. That was my first vehicle and look what's become of it. Describe what you're seeing.

Well, I mean the tires shot. One of the windows busted out. The rear blinker thing is completely hang dangling. Oh my goodness gracious. Click. Bethel's disposable economy where cars get used and then dumped by the side of the road, it's relatively new. The Bethel area was one of the final places colonized in the U.S. territory. It didn't have the natural resources like large gold deposits, whales, or sea otters to

lure settlers. This late colonization is one of the reasons why the U.P.C. culture remains so strong. It's why U.P.C. is one of the few indigenous languages in the U.S. spoken as a first language, and it's why U.P.C pick people still hunt, fish, and gather on their ancestral lands. You pick elders in their 70s and 80s have lived through a rapid cultural transformation. They were born into what was still a largely nomadic hunter-gatherer society.

And now they carry smartphones. They went from feeding dog teams to gassing up snowmobiles, from living in sod houses to heating frame tombs with diesel fuel. A transformation that took hundreds of years and the lower 48 occurred within these elders' lifetimes. One of these elders is Esther Green. Esther, will you introduce yourself? We know Esther Green now will go to the garden. You can go to the garden.

Esther, what year were you born? How old are you? 1938. 81. Esther Green has seen a lot of change in her 81 years. She started life in a nearby village and moved to Bethel as a young girl. Esther Green has seen a lot of change in her 81 years. She started life in a nearby village and moved to Bethel as a young girl. She watched Bethel grow from hundreds of people to thousands of people, and she's seen all the vehicles that have come with them.

We drove down to a beach in Bethel. It's low tide. It's low tide. Yeah. It's really low. There used to be a sea wall here made entirely of dead cars, just dump there to stop erosion. Did it look like just a pile of dead cars stacked on top of each other? Yeah. Mm-hmm.

The dead car sea wall stopped the erosion, but the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation deemed it an environmental danger in 1981 for leaking battery acid and gasoline into the river, and the cars were removed a few years later. This beach was one of the few safe places to park a boat during that time. No rotten, rusty, gas tank everywhere mixed with old carves. In the eupik tradition, everything that isn't created by humans has a yuk. Yuk translates to a person. Plants, animals, water, rocks, and so on all have yukes.

It's a spirit, an animation, an awareness. Chakdama rami, jee dung khtok, chakdama rami, dang duk. Everything around us has ears, and they can see, and they can feel feel just like us human beings. And when we throw vehicles across the landscape, leaving them to rot, Esther says it causes a disruption. God, this one here. God. This is a problem.

I don't think that is just Alaska. This is more of a microcosm of the world. You know, we produce, we produce, and we consume, and then what happens to it? It stays here. It stays on the planet. I think that's a good point, because I think it's related to capitalism and materialism. And you're right. This isn't particularly unique to Bethel. It's just we have a unique context, so it kind of it's all visible. Yeah, let me just catch all these dead puppies here. But here we are. Tire's flat, grass growing. Um, I think that's's gonna be my final click.

All right, 943. That's the end. Diane says she might write a letter to the newspaper about her car count, or she says she might present her findings at a community meeting, or just post it on social media. Maybe it'll spark a conversation. But really, the count was just for her, a way to satisfy her curiosity about a problem that she's observed that with no system to address it, we'll only continue to grow. More vehicles will be barged into Bethel next summer. They'll keep coming, keep dying, and keep piling up.

And as much as Bethel feels unique, it's not. We all throw things away. In many cases, it ends up in a landfill, far removed from our consciousness. But the junk remains among us, on the earth. It's all piling up somewhere. In Bethel, we have no illusions about where that place is. It's around us. We're living in it. Oh, look at that Jeep. That Jeep is a gunner. cheap. cheap is a gunner. 944.

the clicking goes on. haha oh no! Stay tuned after the break for something completely different, an extended preview of a brand new show from Radio Topia. Since you're listening to me right now, I know you are a 99% invisible listener, but I also hope you're a fan of many of the other shows in Radio Topia, that's the podcast network I co-founded with PRX. Well, Radio Topia has just launched a new show and it's really, really cool.

It's called Passendralist, and it's a serialized audio drama, a mystery thriller, about a missing plane, a global conspiracy, and a young woman's quest to figure out what happened. It stars Kelly Marie Tran, she's so good, Colin Morgan, Rob Benedict, and Broadway legend, Patty Lupone. I've heard the whole thing because I have privileges and I'm telling you this show is riveting, it's full of great writing, amazing sound design and I know you're gonna love it. I'm gonna play a little bit for you right now and I think when you hear this you're going to need to know what happens next and subscribe. From Radio Topia, here's passenger list. Hi, hello, we've got a child here, GATE 27 seems lost.

A what? A child who is about, um, held you. I'd say, I'd say, um, five. He was, um, wandering to the terminal with a cotton of juice and a backpack. Did you have a passport? No. Have you put out a call for his parents? Yes, several. Okay. What's his name?

Excuse me. Excuse me. Hi. What's your name? Bratfa. Where's your mummy and daddy? Mama. Bratfa, Bratfa. Where's your mummy and daddy? Mama? Papa? Bratfa.

Is that his surname? Is that your last name? Is that your last name? Bratfa. This is Ernie, please, my English. Where are you? Grade 27. Okay, bring him to security. I'll see you there. Okay.

Goodbye. So, this is Heathrow Airport passenger welfare officer Evelyn Davis. Today's date is April 12th, 2018. It's currently 8.36pm. This is... ...brapper. Do you want something to drink Brava? She needs to that beany.

What did he say? He wants his mother. What's your mum saying Brava? Gasa, Mike, Gide, Gide, Gide, Gide will share it. Mike, G-Mama, Daco, Daddy. Why did you come from Bradford? Do you know? So Samo let you do that. He says he came on a plane. Do you know where you live? I checked the incoming passenger list for Bradford.

Only one here, it's in lock. It looks like he flew in. Where you live? I checked the incoming passenger list for Bradfur, only one here, it's in luck. It looks like he flew in from New York today with his mother, Maria Ellian. Is that your mum's name, Bradfur? Maria? I think that was a nod. Let's get the page out for Maria. Yeah, well, see that's a thing. They were booked on a flight to Sofia, Bulgaria. Even better so we can get back to Ravita.

No, hold on. The flight already left. Maria wasn't on it. So she's still in the airport then. No. She's on a flight back to New York. Atlantic Airlines, flight 702. She should be landing at JFK.

I'm not sure if she's going to's on a flight back to New York. Atlantic Airlines, flight 702. She should be landing at JFK at 11 p.m. New York time. Okay, we need to... Hello, can you connect me with security at Atlantic Airlines, JFK? Yes, I'll hold. It's JFK. Yes, I'll hold. It's JFK. Yes.

Papa, don't worry sweetie. We're going to find you, mummy. This is how a plane has crashed. Heathrow, was expected in a more than 7.02. The Atlantic flight is 7.02. For its radar contact with the plane, with the loss of people on the board. But I think everyone here is bracing themselves for the West. This point really is still a mystery. The disappearance is due to mechanical problems, pilot error or even terrorism. When the commission was in charge of the war,

the war airplane to disappear is not normal. I think we have at this hour every reason to expect that this is not going to be a good outcome. Tempest off-frame. Some relatives of missing passengers were forcefully removed from a news conference. In the satellite images show the plane changing course dramatically to the course before by a suspected bird, my births were the ancient bird strike. This was likely reason. It's the plain with me to 33,000 feet. We know that the NF2, we engine, stracker, a flock of geese, the pilot report.

We have to move on. Life is a fragile thing. Maybe this is a time for all of us to pause and turn to those we love and hold them close because life. Well, life is fragile. control. Hello? Hi, I'm trying to reach Greg Ford. That's me. My name's Caitlin. Lay, I messaged you on Facebook about the flight.

Right. Can you just hang on one second? Yeah. Can you just hang on one second? Yeah. Thank you. Hey guys, I got a question. I want to bring it to you. Do you need me more while I was next? Sorry, I just had to find a quick or quiet spot to talk. Hold on. So, yeah. The woman with that kid. Yeah, you said you were on an incoming flight with her, right?

You sat next to her and her son. What is this for? My brother, Connor, was on 702. Oh, God. I'm so sorry. Yeah, it's not. It's, thank you. I'm just trying to piece all this together.

So if there's anything that you could tell me. Yeah, totally. Like I said in my post, I just happened to be sitting next to the woman with the kid on the fight into London, before she got right back on board the other one. And yeah. Right. But you said that she got right back on board the other one and yeah. Right. But you said that she got a phone call.

Yeah. I wouldn't have thought anything of it if it weren't for all the things going on in the situation, but I hope you're not calling because you're offended by all the speculation. No, not at all. I'm just... I'm actually... it's actually comforting to see that other people have questions, so... Sorry. Anyway, back to this woman. Right, so it's not like we talked much during the flight. I just asked her about her son and if he'd started swimming yet, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yeah, I was just trying to be polite and she didn't really speak much English. And as soon as we landed a Heathrow and everyone's turning their phones on and everything,

she gets this phone call. And I remember, she just froze. So she was scared. Could you hear what she was talking about? No, I mean she was talking in whatever she was speaking in. But definitely, yes, she was scared. I'd terrified, I'd say. And she took the kid in her arms and was just whispering in his ear. And all around us people were unbuckling seat belts and opening the bins

and pulling down two cases and all that. And she's just sitting there staring straight ahead with the kidney horns and her face was like ghost white. What happened when she got into the terminal? I don't know I didn't follow her but when I was in line for the immigration line it was this big big line and a lot of flights had come in all at the same time. And I noticed her standing there all alone. And I remember thinking, where's the kid? I mean, I wouldn't have even remembered it if it weren't for all this talk about, you know, I mean, not a conspiracy exactly, but

something weird going on. But yeah, does that help at all? I think so. Yes, thank you. You don't believe this thing about the flock of geese? I don't know what I believe. Yeah, I must have been really hard for your family. Yeah, it still is.

Yeah, it still is. So what, she just turned right around and checked back into a flight to New York, right? I don't know, I guess. Without the kid, I mean, what kind of mother would do that, right? You think she had something to do with, you know, what brought the plane down? Yeah, I think that there's a lot that we don't know. Right, right. Yeah, I mean, what are any of us now, right? Hello? Hi, is this Anna Dragoff? Who is this?

I'm sorry, you don't know me. My name is Caitlin Leigh. My brother was on 7-0-2. Yes. Your sister was on the plane as well, correct? I was hoping that we could... I can't help you. The first two episodes of Passengers List are out now. Head to www.passengerslist.org to find out more. Or just search for Passengers lists in your favorite podcast app.

99% Invisible was produced this week by Anna Rose MacArthur, edited by Delaney Hall, mixed in tech production by the miracle worker Sirifusif, music by Sean Rial. Katie Mingle is the senior producer Kurt Colstad is the digital director. The rest of the team is Joe Rosenberg, Emmett Fitzgerald, Vivian Lee, Chris Barube, Avery Trouffleman, Sophia Klatsker, and me Roman Mars. We are a project of 91.7 KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. Maybe over the years of me saying that, you've thought, beautiful downtown Oakland, California

would look really good on a t-shirt. Well, then, my friend, you should go to 9ipi.org slash store, and I've got a treat for you. We are a member of Radio Topia from PRX, a fiercely independent collective of the most innovative shows in all of podcasting. Find them all at radiotopia.fm. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet me at Roman Mars on the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram and Reddit too. But you can get to know Bethel Alaska a little bit more and see a picture of the crazy sea

wall made of dead cars. Who in the world thought that was a good idea. at 99pi.org Radio to PO from PRX you