On U.S. Farms, Deaths in Silos Persist

E. Jason Wambsgans/Chicago Tribune

The grain-elevator complex in Mount Carroll, Ill., where two teenage boys died and another was injured while working in July 2010.

STERLING, Mich. ? Tommy Osier, 18, a popular but indifferent student, was still a year from graduating from high school, and that was no sure thing. Farm work paid him $7.40 an hour, taught him discipline and gave him new skills. He had begun talking about making a life in farming.

But he hated the chore he drew on Memorial Day of last year, working inside the silo at Pine Grove Farm. The corn was damp and crusted. It tended to hang up on the sides of the old six-story cement bin and had to be busted up with a steel rod before it would cascade to the bottom to be shoveled out.

That morning, just after 9, the phone rang in the Osier home. ?Tommy?s in the silo,? his sister relayed to their mother, Linda, unsure of what it meant.

Ms. Osier grew up on a hog farm and knew right away. ?He?s dead,? she said, slumping to the floor. ?Tommy?s dead.?

Even as the rate of serious injury and fatalities on American farms has fallen, the number of workers dying by entrapment in grain bins and silos has remained stubbornly steady. The annual number of such accidents rose throughout the past decade, reaching a peak of at least 26 deaths in 2010, before dropping somewhat since.

Silos teeming with corn, wheat or soybeans become death traps when grain cascades out of control, asphyxiating or crushing their victims. Since 2007, 80 farmworkers have died in silo accidents; 14 of them were teenage boys.

The deaths are horrific and virtually all preventable.

Experts say the continuing rate of silo deaths is due in part to the huge amount of corn being produced and stored in the United States to meet the global demand for food, feed and, increasingly, ethanol-based fuel.

That the deaths persist reveals continuing flaws in the enforcement of worker safety laws and weaknesses in rules meant to protect the youngest farmworkers. Nearly 20 percent of all serious grain bin accidents involve workers under the age of 20.

Last year, the Labor Department proposed new regulations aimed at tightening protections for children doing farm work.

The proposed federal regulations would have prohibited children under 18 from working in large commercial grain bins, silos or other enclosed spaces. But the Obama administration, sensitive to Republican charges that it was choking the economy with expensive regulations, pulled back the proposed rules this year in the face of furious farm-state objections.

Even those rules would not have covered working conditions on family farms and small operations like the one where Tommy Osier died and which account for 70 percent of grain entrapment accidents. Experts on farm safety say that most farmers are aware of the hazards of sending someone into a bin full of unstable grain, but often lack the equipment or training to protect their workers against an avalanche.

?The concept of walking down the grain should be avoided at all costs,? said Wayne Bauer, the safety director at the Star of the West Milling Company in Frankenmuth, Mich., which operates grain elevators in five states. ?And people sending kids into spaces where they have no business being deserve to be fined.?

Dave Schwab, who operated the farm where Tommy Osier died, told investigators that he knew the air inside silos could be toxic and combustible, but that he was unaware of the dangers of entrapment in cascading corn. He did not have air-monitoring or rescue equipment at the farm, but investigators found no evidence that he willfully flouted state rules for sending workers into confined spaces.

?They Didn?t Have a Clue?

Wyatt Whitebread, 14, had been on the job for just two weeks at a commercial grain-elevator complex in Mount Carroll, Ill., when he was sent into a 500,000-bushel storage tower to loosen corn kernels that were sticking to the side. Bin No. 9 was one of more than a dozen buildings on the property owned and operated by Haasbach L.L.C.

Shortly after he and other teenage workers entered the bin on July 10, 2010, a manager at the base opened two floor holes to speed the flow of the grain. The sudden action dragged Wyatt, who was walking atop the corn to help it flow, toward the floor of the bin, engulfing him under the corn as he screamed for help. Alejandro Pacas, 19, who had joined the work crew the day before, rushed over to aid him and was quickly entrapped himself. Both teenagers died in seconds.

Seth Berkman and Jake Rosenwasser contributed reporting from New York.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/us/on-us-farms-deaths-in-silos-persist.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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