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Years of emergency training and specialized equipment led to a successful grain bin rescue Wednesday afternoon in rural Rock County.
“It feels really good,” Luverne Fire Chief David Van Batavia said after the incident.
“Three guys were in the bin, and three guys came out. No one was injured.”
Involved in the incident were Ron Fick, Jim Fick and Mel Fick at the grain storage facility at 1159 101st St. southwest of Luverne.
The 911 call came in to dispatch at 2:28 p.m. that a man was stuck in a grain bin. When rescue crews arrived at 2:34, they discovered three men were in the bin.
Jim was buried nearly over his head, and Ron was entrenched up to his chest. Mel had shut off the unloading equipment and was frantically working to clear corn from Jim’s face so he could breathe.
Van Batavia said firefighters from Hills and Luverne worked together methodically to properly respond.
“It was time-consuming, but it was a well-run scene,” he said. “Everybody did their part and everyone was on the same page.”
Firemen took turns working in the bin, switching out frequently to take a break from the heat.
Van Batavia said grain bin accidents require a patient approach that’s different from fire calls or crash scenes.
“We’re used to responding quickly at accidents and fires, but these are different,” he said.
“When someone’s buried like that, you just want to hop in right away and help, but we have to set up ropes and equipment and get everybody set up properly.”
A key piece of equipment, he said, is what’s called a grain bin tube, an aluminum cylinder that’s assembled around a victim trapped in grain.
It’s lowered around the victim — pounded in like a fence post, and grain is removed from the tube via a portable auger to eventually lift out the trapped person.
That’s what happened Wednesday, except that a second tube was needed from the Hills Fire Department to help Ron.
“We didn’t realize until later that more than one person was trapped in the bin,” Van Batavia said.
Meanwhile, the Rock County ambulance service was on the scene, and Sanford air med was called for standby during the nearly two-hour episode.
As it turned out, air transport wasn’t needed, and the Ficks were treated and released, one at Sanford Luverne and two at the scene.
But the outcome could have been much different.
‘They saved our lives’
“It could have been ugly,” Ron said, recounting the moments inside the bin leading up to the 911 call.
He said the three of them were unloading corn from a large 48-foot bin when a chunk of corn plugged the auger.
He and Jim climbed up the outside ladder of the bin, climbed down the ladder on the inside, and walked across the grain down to the center bottom of the bin.
“The corn where we were standing was probably only three feet deep,” Ron said.
“And then all at once, it was like a big avalanche. The corn (piled against the bin wall) let go and came down on us.”
Fortunately, at that moment, Mel climbed the bin to check their progress and was able to shut off equipment and call for help. He then climbed back in the bin to help.
“He laid across the corn, using his body as a dam so that the corn couldn’t come down any farther until 911 arrived,” Ron said. “We have to thank him, too.”
In hindsight, he said they should have approached the plugged auger differently, but at the time they thought they were doing the right thing.
“Just like every other farmer, we thought we were doing it the proper way, and it ended up not being that way,” Ron said.
“We know better. We’ve heard all the stories. We thought we were being very cautious and it backfired.”
In the days since the accident, he said people have been supportive.
“We’ve had so many guys call and neighbors and friends tell us, ‘We do the same thing, and we’ve been in the same situation many times,’” Ron said.
Other than being stiff and sore, he said Friday that they feel fine, but shaken.
“They saved our lives,” he said. “We really appreciate the firemen and first responders. They really did an excellent job. We couldn’t have gotten by without them.”
The practice
of saving lives
Fortunately for the Ficks and others who have been trapped in grain, Hills and Luverne firefighters are trained for grain bin rescues.
Van Batavia said firemen train annually in the CHS bins with “Rescue Randy,” the 180-pound, 6-foot-tall dummy. “We throw him in one of those big bins and then we rescue him,” Van Batavia said.
Without the grain tubes he said the Ficks wouldn’t have gotten out of the bin on their own.
“Absolutely not,” Van Batavia said. “You would never get anywhere on that call without the tubes. The only thing you could do is to start taking it out the bottom.”
This response isn’t preferred, he said.
“That’s your initial reaction – just open the door and let the corn out, but you get this rush of corn and then nothing,” he said.
The bottlenecked corn then needs to be shoveled.
To illustrate how effective the tubes are in protecting victims from crushing pressure, he said firemen had to wait until the next day to recover the equipment from the Fick bins after they removed corn.
And then they discovered the welds on the aluminum had been broken. “It’s crazy the amount of pressure it kept off them,” Van Batavia said.
The tubes will need to be replaced, but he said CHS and New Vision have been generous about providing funding for local firemen to have them on hand.
“It’s a smart thing for them to have out there, to make sure everybody has what they need,” he said.
Van Batavia said he remembers the first one he assisted with in 2010. “We ended up punching a bunch of holes in the bin to get the corn out,” he recalled.
Since then, he said he’s helped with three additional grain bin rescues and also a trench cave-in at a construction site.
Despite new rescue techniques and equipment, grain bin accidents are often fatal, according to the National Ag Safety Database.
Just over 200 farmers have died as a result of grain bin suffocation accidents over the past 30 years, the organization reports.
It takes four seconds for an adult to sink knee-deep in flowing grain and be rendered unable to get free without assistance. In just 20 seconds, an adult can be fully engulfed and die from suffocation.
Rescues are difficult because of the force of downward-flowing grain.
Research shows that 900 pounds of pull is required to raise an adult mannequin covered with corn, which is why grain bin rescues are so difficult.
Meanwhile, the Ficks are glad to be among the survival statistics.
“Between the rescue workers and God watching over us, we are here today,” Ron said.
“I just gotta put that out there. There were some guardian angels watching over us, that’s for sure.”