NYT feature: Silos Loom as Death Traps on American Farms

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/29/us/on-us-farms-deaths-in-silos-persist.html


By JOHN M. BRODER
Published: October 28, 2012

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.”

FULL story and video at link.

[newfie11]

1. Oh yeah

They are extremely dangerous

[meadowlark5]

2. I grew up in Nebraska corn country and knew 2 people who died in corn silos

Though I'm sure there were more than what I was aware of.

One was a friend of my sister, he was in the silo doing whatever they do and somehow got sucked under into the the dried corn and suffocated. One was a friend of mine The dust inside silos can be very combustible. He and another guy were working inside and something sparked an explosion and he died.

[madrchsod]

3. two kids died in a silo accident near where i live

the company they were working for was found negligent for their deaths.

[Brickbat]

4. Jayzus H.

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.

I didn't grow up on a farm, and even *I* know that corn in a silo can kill you. Schwab's lying or is too stupid to farm.

[Kolesar]

5. "choking the economy with expensive regulations"

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.
**
Like sending children into the works of a knitting mill