HALF MOON BAY — State officials fined two farms where a mass shooter killed seven people in January, citing the companies’ failures to provide employees with active shooter training that could’ve saved their lives.
Cal/OSHA cited California Terra Garden, Inc. and Concord Farms Inc. for a combined 41 violations, nine of them defined as “serious,” for failing to have a plan or procedures to immediately notify employees of an active shooter threat and for not addressing previous incidents of workplace violence, according to a Monday press release.
California Terra Garden — where the mass shooting began — was hit with 22 violations and $113,800 in penalties while Concord Farms Inc. — where the shooter ended his killing spree — was fined $51,770 for 19 violations.
Both employers, state regulators say, failed to establish workplace safety plans that evaluated the threat of workplace violence and train workers in a language they can understand. The majority of workers at both farms spoke either Spanish or Chinese dialects.
Both farms were also cited for failure to secure labor camp permits for onsite worker housing as well as not maintaining exits properly, failing to keep walkways clear of obstructions. Both farms also faced fines for not having enough drinkable water on hand, failing to maintain safe temperatures inside the greenhouses and not hearing to COVID-19 prevention standards.
The state’s penalties come six months after disgruntled California Terra Garden employee Chunli Zhao shot and killed four of his co-workers and injured a fifth at the mushroom farm where he worked off Highway 92, then drove to Concord Farms and killed three more farmworkers. The farms did not return a request for comment.
In the immediate aftermath of the shooting, the Bay Area News Group learned of a previous shooting incident at California Terra Garden in the summer of 2022. An investigation by public officials also revealed squalid living conditions for several farmworkers there, including Zhao, who lived in a rudimentary shack covered by a blue tarp on the property.
Since then county and state officials have launched investigations into living and working conditions at the farms, but the Cal/OSHA fines are the first safety penalties the two companies are facing.
“While this tragedy that took place happened six months ago, it’s far from over,” said Belinda Hernandez-Arriaga, Director of Ayudando Latinos a Soñar, a local farmworker aid organization helping survivors of the shooting to pick up the pieces.
“It took this horrific incident to happen for people to really stop and look at the conditions our farmworkers are living and working in. These penalties are valid and super important, but more needs to be done.”
Hernandez-Arriaga said that while “there’s no price you can put on seven lives lost” the $167,000 in total fines were shockingly low.
“Will that make an impact? I don’t know. Will it make a statement in terms of the economics of it? I don’t know,” Hernandez-Arriaga said. “I do think this is the government saying, ‘Hey, we’re watching and we’re going to be monitoring.’ So I think we have to keep pushing for that to continue and to make sure our government officials are holding them accountable.”
The penalties come as Hernandez-Arriaga and her team at ALAS continue to work to provide financial and mental health aid to the survivors of the shooting, many of whom witnessed the atrocities and have still not returned to work due to mental health challenges. For many who survived the incident was an irreparable stain on their immigrant journey to the United States, a place they had hoped would bring them prosperity but instead showed them its deepest flaws.
“They had their colleagues killed, murdered; it’s something that’s going to take a lot of time to really be able to heal,” Hernandez-Arriaga said. “They’re still in a lot of pain, they’re still suffering and it still continues to be a tragedy here in our community.”
Half Moon Bay Vice Mayor Joaquin Jimenez said the fines are just a start but it’ll take working with state and county officials to keep the two mushroom farms accountable in the future and also address the rampant work-safety violations experienced by workers at other coastal farms.
“I’m hoping that other farms will learn from this so they’re up to date,” Jimenez said.
Jimenez has worked with farmworkers for years. He said work-safety training and emergency preparedness standards are virtually non-existent.
“You don’t think of a shooting happening at a farm, they do (active shooter) trainings at schools, hospitals, and corporations… but not at a farm,” Jimenez said. “I don’t think they offer natural disaster preparedness training or even fire extinguisher training. That needs to change and we need to do more.”
San Mateo County Supervisor Ray Mueller, who was among several public officials that toured the Terra Garden encampment in the aftermath of the shooting and labeled the living conditions there “deplorable,” said the fines are a step in the right direction.
“I am grateful to CAL/OSHA for their diligence in this investigation,” Mueller said in a statement. “But our work is not finished. We are committed to improving the lives of all farm workers in San Mateo County.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com