It started as a typical day on the job for Araceli Berzañez. On Jan. 22, she donned a coat, apron, and sleeves before stepping into a hulking walk-in refrigerator at a factory near Los Angeles International Airport, where she started slicing bread for hundreds of sandwiches that would be fed to airline passengers.

Usually, Berzañez spends hours in the cooler, piling on the low-cost ingredients familiar to economy passengers, before plastic-wrapping each sandwich to be loaded onto planes. For 10 years, Berzañez has worked for Flying Food Group, a caterer that supplies meals to Air France, ANA, Lufthansa, and other airlines at 15 U.S. airports, including LAX and SFO. 

But that day on the assembly line was interrupted when a stove caught fire, leaving Berzañez and another woman trapped inside the cooler. 

In 2023, California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health found that walk-in freezers — separate from the coolers that Berzañez worked in — at LAX could not be opened from the inside by employees. The agency also cited the company for fire-safety violations, including failure to maintain operational fire extinguishers and unobstructed emergency exits. Officials fined the company $5,210.

In January, labor union Unite Here, which represents Flying Food Group workers, submitted a complaint to Cal/OSHA related to the fire. A representative from California’s Department of Industrial Relations, which oversees Cal/OSHA, confirmed that there are two open cases related to the LAX facility but did not say whether the January fire is being investigated.

When the fire alarm started ringing, Berzañez was unaware of the hectic scene unfolding outside the fridge’s thick, metal walls. 

Jesse Cuevas, a cook, was 15 feet from the blaze. “It wasn’t too big at first,” he said. “Then all of a sudden it was a big fireball.” A Los Angeles County Fire Department report indicates that it started while a contractor was repairing the stove. 

Workers ran from the flaming kitchen, past fryers and food-prep stations, covering their noses and mouths as the acrid smell of burning plastic filled the air. 

“There was no supervisor, no one managing anything. There wasn’t anyone to guide us,” Maria Ovando, a cold food station attendant, said in Spanish. She was in the staff cafeteria when a stampede of colleagues raced in from the kitchens, shouting and running toward the exits. In the confusion, she ran after her coworkers, only to get stuck in a crowd of hundreds trying to exit through a single door. 

The fire alarm continued to blare in the cooler, the mechanical buzz echoing off the metal walls. Though Berzañez was growing more concerned, her colleague in the cooler tried to reassure her that it was a false alarm, a common occurrence.

Berzañez tried opening the door, but it didn’t budge.

“I thought maybe I hadn’t pushed hard enough. And I tried again to open the cooler door with more force,” she said in Spanish. She couldn’t get out because the door was chained shut from the outside.

After several minutes of banging on the door, a supervisor opened it, Berzañez said. The smell of smoke struck Berzañez as she caught her first glimpse of the kitchen. 

“I said, ‘Dios mío, what horror,’” Berzañez recalled.

A photo taken after the fire, obtained by The Standard, shows a heavy metal chain slung across the cooler’s metal door. 

Workers say supervisors often lock coolers when not in use to keep staff and external inspectors from entering. On Jan. 22, Berzañez and her colleague had started their workday in the cooler when a supervisor told them to wait in the cafeteria while an airline inspector passed through the facility. After the inspector left, Berzañez and her colleague saw that the cooler had been unlocked and reentered to finish cutting bread. Not realizing anyone was inside, a supervisor chained the fridge shut.

Flying Food Group claims that all workers were safely evacuated and “no employees were confined and no injuries occurred.” 

While Berzañez and her colleagues made it out of the factory safely that day, Flying Food Group workers at LAX and SFO say the January fire was not the first time the company compromised their safety. Workers have complained about malfunctioning equipment, uneven floors, improper training to operate heavy machinery, overcrowded shop floors, and inadequate fire safety equipment and procedures.

“If there were a fire, we’d be in trouble,” said Jian Jun Ma, who has worked at Flying Food Group’s SFO facility for a decade. He alleged that the kitchen where he works lacks suitable fire safety equipment. Recently, the ventilation system malfunctioned, releasing a thick cloud of steam that panicked workers.

A spokesperson for Flying Food Group denied the claims, saying it “places a strong emphasis on fire safety,” conducts regular fire drills, and maintains extinguishers and other fire-safety equipment throughout its facilities. 

In addition to the complaints filed by Unite Here and the three ongoing Cal/OSHA investigations, there have been other safety and labor violations. In 2023, California Highway Patrol cited the company for instructing workers to drive transport vehicles without a commercial drivers license. 

When the city of Los Angeles found Flying Food Group to be in violation of its Living Wage Ordinance in 2022 and 2023, it required the company to issue back pay and increase its wages. This year, Flying Food Group settled a National Labor Relations Board case, admitting that it had engaged in union-busting at the LAX facility and agreeing to pay damages and back pay to a suspended employee.

Los Angeles World Airports, the agency that operates LAX, launched a probe into Flying Food Group in February. LAWA did not respond to a request for comment. 

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that she “takes the allegations about this airport contractor seriously and is engaged with Unite Here Local 11 and Los Angeles World Airports to make sure they are appropriately investigated and addressed.”

The representative of Flying Food Group said it is “committed to maintaining a safe workplace and cooperating fully with all regulatory authorities.” When concerns are raised, the spokesperson added, “they are investigated and handled with established procedures.” 

Workers, however, say little has changed since the fire. 

Employees were instructed to return to their jobs a few hours after the blaze, when county firefighters had cleared the building for reentry. But when they returned to the kitchens, they saw smoke in the air and reported difficulty breathing.

By the end of the week, Berzañez was back in the cooler slicing bread, piling on cold cuts and cheese and wrapping up sandwiches.

Again inside the cooler’s metal walls, Berzañez was fearful that at any moment a fire or earthquake could leave her trapped once more, she said. 

She added that proper fire safety training and other precautions could help her feel more secure, but the company has yet to take action. Their “focus is on the dollar sign — making more money and lining millionaires’ pockets — rather than protecting the lives of employees,” she said.

Instead, she noted, unable to rely on her employer, “now more than ever we’re putting ourselves in the hands of the creator and all the saints to protect us.”