YORK, Neb. (KOLN) – The widow of an electrician and the YouTuber he was contracted to help overhaul a nuclear silo in York have reached a settlement.
Court records show the lawsuit filed against Andrew Flair, his businesses and his father was dismissed earlier this month. The lawsuit was filed by Mary Arkfeld after her husband, 66-year-old Joseph “Joe” Arkfeld was crushed to death in Flair’s nuclear silo.
The lawsuit, initially filed in 2023 and later refiled in 2024, alleged Joe had been negligently killed when he was fatally crushed by an enormously heavy steel door that led into Flair’s nuclear silo. Joe was found dead at the facility by his son-in-law on Dec. 20, 2022.
Earlier that day, Arkfeld alleged her husband had been left alone in the facility and given inadequate information about how the door actually worked. The steel door, which functioned as the entrance to the facility, reportedly had been put together using a winch, a pulley system, metal rods, jumper cables and a car battery.
The lawsuit alleged the door functioned irregularly — slowly coming down or even stopping for a moment before suddenly dropping, likely hitting the ground with 2,000 pounds of force.
Flair, who operates a YouTube channel with 2.87 million subscribers, regularly mocked safety standards in over a dozen videos regarding the silo, Arkfeld’s attorney wrote. The videos remain posted on his YouTube channel as of Thursday.
Joe had been contracted by Flair and his father to wire electrics inside the silo as they worked to renovate into a studio apartment — filming the progress along the way.
Court records show Flair bought the abandoned U.S. nuclear silo in 2022 for $550,000 and took it to market for $750,000 in 2023.
Attorneys for both Arkfeld and Flair declined to comment on the nature of the settlement or its amount, only stating that both parties had come to an amicable resolution of their disputes.
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