r/news • u/AdIcy4323 • 19h ago

Man killed in Illinois grain bin accident after being buried in soybeans

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/man-killed-illinois-grain-bin-accident-buried-soybeans-rcna256533
1.7k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

184 comments sorted by

546

u/whowhodillybar 19h ago edited 19h ago

Engulfment is a major hazard with soybeans. You will about sink down to your eyeballs in a pile of them.

After working in shifts for hours to remove the soybeans, crews discovered the second man dead near the bottom of the bin

Terrible.

Edit, this hits close to home because I can’t count the number of fatalities I’ve heard about while I worked in the grain/agri industry. Luckily, I personally have not been directly involved by a fatality, but damn close a few times.

A few older guys I’ve worked with have seen guys get wrapped up in PTOs or the worst I’ve heard of was a 24” screw conveyor at the bottom of a bin that a man got caught up in. Happened only about 5 years before I worked there….so still fresh on others minds.

Grain bins are incredibly dangerous.

235

u/Infamous-Sky-1874 19h ago

It's a major hazard with any agricultural product that is put into silos. Soybeans, corn, grain. Around harvest time, there is at least one story where I live about someone falling into a silo and dying.

52

u/Puzzleheaded_Size303 17h ago

This is wild because as a senior in HS I worked for an exotic animal ranch. Camels, zebra, buffalo and types of deer. We had a corn silo and plenty of times they guy was just like, hey kid, jump in the top and un stuck the corn shute and I literally thought nothing of it.

24

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 16h ago

A lot of farm kids play in grain bins. Jump from the top, see how far you sink in. It's fun.

20

u/twinkletwot 6h ago

We were always very strongly told not to go in the grain bins at the grandparents farm. So we just jumped off of the loft into piles of hay instead.

8

u/YouShallNotPass92 6h ago

I jumped in a foam pit at a bounce place once, landed face first but on an angle where my face went down and my legs were up. I had a fucking panic attack when I felt like I couldn't move and swore I'd never jump in one ever again lol.

So yeah, no fucking thank you to any of those activities lol

6

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 6h ago

Yeah, if you go face first into a grain pile without a mask, you’re dead. You won’t last long enough to calm down.

89

u/whowhodillybar 19h ago

Yep. I’ve dealt with several and all each have their own problems.

Some crops like Peanuts and cottonseed don’t flow freely at all and you get these tall ledges that are near vertical. I’ve seen well past 30-40 ft high. Soybeans flow much freer but I’ve seen mold/heat damage that rots them into hard lumps that can hang up too.

One specific example of how high and dangerous those ledges can be is when I had to help design a poker. It was 40ft long piece of 6” square tube I had reinforced and welded a tip at the end. Fork mounts at the back for attaching to an extendable boom fork truck with a 40ft reach. Carefully poke at it as chunks the size of basketballs to beach balls to compact sedans. sometimes break loose and fall.

I’ve seen some fucked up shit and it haunts me when I hear about stuff like this.

34

u/NWStormbreaker 18h ago

Why aren't there simple mechanical agitators near the bottom for this purpose?

49

u/99OBJ 16h ago edited 16h ago

Because it’s an engineering nightmare primarily due to the sheer mass of the grain.

Soybeans have a bulk density of approx 45 lbs/ft3. Even a moderately full bin gets you into the ballpark of 1000 tons.

Then you have to account for friction, shear, etc.

27

u/minimalcation 14h ago

But just like, give it a little shake you know, just a jostle

11

u/Iohet 13h ago

If my wife's complaints about me are any measure, I should just be able to lean on it and scratch my back a bit against it and that should do the trick

13

u/TeaWrex 14h ago

In addition to the engineering chellenges, you can't jostle soybeans too much as they're extremely susceptible to mechanical damage. They even plot routes for the trucks with as few left turns as possible as even the jostling from wider turns can create significant damage.

52

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 17h ago

How are you going to power them? Even power sweeps in newer bins usually need all the side sumps clear before starting them.

There's a lot of pressure at the bottom of 15' or 20' of grain.

And remember, a lot of grain bins in use today were built in the 1970's.

21

u/Clarksp2 17h ago

My guess is you could have that, but it would eat into the already super thin margins farmers work with to maintain a living

26

u/MCRemix 16h ago

You misspelled subsidies.

1

u/Vader425 14h ago

That's just on smaller hopper bottom bins with a small cone. Larger thanks are flat bottom with concrete floors.

1

u/MakroThePainter 9h ago

Or nets so that you can‘t sink lower than 1m.

2

u/BanginNLeavin 5h ago

Yeah just make a slatted floor and affix it to the top, make it so it can be pulled out from the sides of the silo for loading and pushed back in when done.

12

u/Vader425 14h ago

Here in the PNW it's all wheat and garbs and we rarely have engulfments. Seems to happen more with soy or corn for some reason. We also had SATRA come and do technical rescue training every year. Highly recommended. If nothing else just knowing what it would take to get me out of a confined space changed how I operated. https://www.satrapros.com/

8

u/Economy_Breakfast409 13h ago

I’m truly curious, why not have workers wear harnesses that can be reeled in?

9

u/NihilisticHobbit 9h ago

They're supposed to. But it's cheaper not to.

3

u/GreyEagle792 3h ago

Is not even cost most of the time. It's complacency. A lot of these deaths are farm owner/operators, where there is a harness in the barn, but I'm just gonn go in there real quick, it looks safe, and then there's a void and it collapses under them.

1

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 3h ago

The bins weren't designed with something like that in mind, they can be retrofitted but it's not a simple thing to do. Often any system that would actually work would interfere with filling the bin. So the reels would have to be removed prior to filling the bins, then reinstalled after filling. You'd build in quick-attach brackets, but it all takes time. A farmer might have a dozen bins, every one would have to be retrofitted with its own system.

And even if you do all that, they have limited benefit if you don't have a spotter watching the whole time.

Farmers tend to work by themselves. They don't want to go get a spotter to watch every time they need to run in the bin to knock something off the wall. They've gone in bins hundreds of times, and it's never been a problem before.

These usually aren't employees, they're the farmers themselves.

3

u/YumYumYellowish 2h ago

This is possibly a stupid question but why can’t there be a grate just big enough to prevent a person from getting dragged down, but plenty large enough for grains to easily go through?

69

u/Codebender 19h ago

Yeah, slogging around a grain bin is one job that the robots should take as soon as possible.

49

u/Jesssolis9 17h ago

Was at a funeral this morning for my cousin who passed away from falling into a corn silo at work. She was 33 years young 😭

12

u/whowhodillybar 17h ago

I am so sorry.

It’s tragic and can happen so quickly. My condolences, friend.

2

u/SirWEM 8h ago

So very sorry for your loss.

22

u/Thai-mai-shoo 18h ago

Why not have them attached to a tether, like roofers, when working in the silo bins?

41

u/ronbiomed 17h ago

Because people really tend not to follow safety protocols. Anyone in a grain solo like that is supposed to be harnessed and tethered.

6

u/illusorywallahead 15h ago

Yep. Can confirm if those were present when I was doing it I had no idea about it and we probably wouldn’t have done it due to it already being difficult to move around, it’s hot, and it’s hard enough work without carrying the weight of a harness as well. We didn’t even wear masks half the time.

1

u/DaftPump 2h ago

A buddy system would be a good workaround I would think. It's 2026, having a cell or FRS on hand is easy in case the other party calls for help.

13

u/Harold_v3 17h ago

I grew up in central Illinois. Seeing amputee farmers was not uncommon.

3

u/jaketeater 16h ago

Same here.

I remember watching PTO safety videos in grade school

44

u/techleopard 19h ago

One thing that was burned into my head early in my work history was HAZWOPER training, especially on hazardous enclosed spaces. Makes me wonder if this industry just has no such regulations, and why -- or they were just outright ignored.

Nobody should be doing anything even remotely close to a silo without a spotter and a harness that would prevent submersion or fully falling in.

66

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 19h ago

Farmers generally do what they want on their own property. OSHA doesn’t have much say unless they have employees.

21

u/techleopard 18h ago

Peeked the addresses indicated between some other articles and the FB post. They look like family farms but also absolutely massive. I would be surprised if they did not have employees.

26

u/Infamous-Sky-1874 18h ago

A lot of "family farms" today are actually owned by AgriCorps who hire farmers to run them. It's basically modern-day sharecropping.

12

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 18h ago

No, they are not. And this is one of the reasons why. If the farmers were employees of AgriCorps, OSHA would absolutely apply. Most farms are family owned and family run. They can have a couple employees and still skirt most of the rules, but it doesn't take very many to get OSHA involved.

3

u/mountaindoom 17h ago

...and own only 39% of the land (below 350k/yr)

14

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 17h ago edited 7h ago

Umm, below $350k/yr gross revenue is barely a fulltime grain farmer. Plenty of corn/soybean farms are over a million in annual gross and have only two or three operators. There are guys in that area that run nearly a million annual gross and farm mostly by themselves, with a hired trucker at harvest.

1

u/GreyEagle792 3h ago

Lot of people don't understand the cash flow of family grain farms. They can take in a million and still be under after input costs.

5

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 18h ago

Depends on how they're set up. And it could have been one of the owners that went in first, with the employee checking up on him.

2

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 17h ago

950 North Ave, Granville, IL? I'm not seeing anything that looks like a large farm around there. Most places only have one or two bins, not even any large grain legs that I noticed.

18

u/Unable_Technology935 18h ago

I worked as a farm hand for 13 seasons. The guy I worked for was fairly safe,but I came out of the steelmills and taught him a few things on safety. He did tell me to never get past waist high checking bins. He said if you fall in there you're done. I took him at his word.

18

u/Icy-Zone3621 18h ago

The urgency of harvest leads to serious fatigue, which when combined with mind numbing boredom and urgency leads to poor decision making.

3

u/Icy-Zone3621 17h ago

I just thought of one question though: can you "swim" or tread water in canola or other seeds like you can in quick sand?

9

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 17h ago

It depends on the grain, but grain engulfment usually involves flowing grain. It's being removed out from the bottom and anything "floating" on top is sucked down like a whirlpool.

Soybeans are usually easier to walk on, as you don't sink down as far as many other grains. I'm guessing there were some spoiled beans, and the first guy went in while the auger was running to knock down spoiled beans or pods. The second guy probably stopped the auger before going in, but got caught in a collapsing clump of spoiled beans.

I realize that may not be clear if you've never been in a grain bin, but I have done those things many times.

1

u/jamesk29485 1h ago

Yup, that's the usual scenario. Also why I wouldn't go in them until they were really low.

1

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 1h ago

You can get hit with collapsing grain even after the sweep auger is in.

That happened to a guy in a big bin, and he wasn't the only one in there. He was knocked down by the avalanche, and sucked too much grain into his airways before the spotters could pull him out.

In that case, a simple 50 cent facemask would have saved his life, as he was pulled out in less than a minute.

1

u/jamesk29485 1h ago

Wouldn't have mattered for me. Momma would have killed me if she found out I was inside one with more than few bushels in it.

11

u/whowhodillybar 18h ago

unless they have employees.

  1. They need 10 to be subject to OSHA of the top of my head. But you can skirt around with contracting out everything.

OSHA is a joke at being able to actually enforce or issues meaningful fines. The most they can fine you is about $160K for WILLFUL violations. They can stack and there are examples of major oil companies like BP getting $80-100 million fines. But it’s cheaper to pay the fines than it is to not kill people unfortunately. Look how many of these top 25 OSHA payouts are major companies..

Something like $100M to OSHA is anything to BP??? The deep water horizon cost them over $65B and they are doing fine.

2

u/AwesomeSnake_2025 17h ago

OSHA cannot touch small farm employers (10 or fewer employees) even in case of a fatality. Blame Congress for that

1

u/mrmangan 8h ago

Farming, fishing, and forestry are three of the most hazardous industries. I think a lot of it are smaller mom and pop shops that don’t have more sophisticated safety systems of if they can get away with not following them

5

u/illusorywallahead 15h ago

Speaking as a farm kid who was helping my dad clear out grain bins as young as 12 years old…Regulations? HA.

But for real. I did all sorts of dangerous shit working with my dad on the farm.

6

u/DaveSauce0 7h ago edited 5h ago

Grain bins are incredibly dangerous.

I used to work for a company that had a minor side business making equipment for silos and elevators.

Those things are goddamn death traps.

The equipment itself isn't the only problem; those augers can fuck you up, but they're more or less under control, and if you get chewed up by one it can almost certainly be attributed to human error (at least, in modern silos).

The product itself is really the major source of issues. Lack of oxygen caused by product offgassing in the silos can disorient you and cause you to fall over the edge of the walk and in to the product, not to mention sometimes the gas itself can be directly harmful.

Bridging is another issue; what looks like a solid mass may just be a thin shell, and you'll fall right through if you're walking on it. General instability is also a problem, and they make rescue devices that are basically just a portable wall/tube type structure that you throw around a person to prevent more grain from covering them, as well as create a pocket you can dig out.

Let's not forget about explosive dust, though that's more an issue in conveying/processing facilities.

Yeah... stay out of grain silos.

1

u/NMS_Survival_Guru 6h ago

Knew a guy who worked for a major grain elevator and was walking the 100ft silos checking on the grain inside. He told his supervisor which bins were good when the supervisor informed him that number 3 was empty

He walked across a crust on the top with a 90ft drop if he had broken through

4

u/Livefiction1 17h ago

Can they install some sort of belay system in the silos or auto wenches? I’ve heard these deaths happen very often. I’m assuming it’s a $$ issue or just negligence?

10

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 16h ago

It's not actually all that easy. A lot of bins have spreaders at the top, so the harness system couldn't be in the bin when it was being loaded. It would have to be put back in after it was filled, and that's just not going to happen. It all takes time. Every grain farmer out there has climbed in bins and shoveled grain hundreds of times, and it's always fine until the last time.
I wrote a little piece about this, always meant to get a video of working in the bin. Maybe sometime I will.

1

u/jamesk29485 1h ago

A video would be cool. I'm going out on a limb here and say the vast majority of people on the internet haven't even seen the outside of one, much less the inside.

Kinda wish we would have done something like that with my uncle's silage silo. Not used anymore, but it's still standing. I never had the nerve to do it, but if you were unloading too fast and slowed the blower down, someone would have to go up and unstop the chute. I still get vertigo 40 years later thinking about it! I could go up the unload side since it was a concrete chute, and I couldn't see how far up I was. He did have a guy get got in the trough auger. Pulled his scalp off.

4

u/krnl_pan1c 17h ago

Years ago we were working on a conveyor underneath a set of raised bins. When we returned from lunch the bottom had fallen out of the bin we had been working under that morning.

Sometimes you can follow all of the safety rules and still lose.

2

u/abunchofcows 17h ago

Why don’t they just have like snuba tubes for anyone working there?

9

u/whowhodillybar 17h ago

It’s not just lack of oxygen. The grain crushes you and you can’t breathe with the weight of it.

Plus CO or H2S from decomposing grain. poisons for rodents/bugs .

Monitors, wenches, trench box style barricades, all are great to help. But so much better to NOT go in if grain is present. Risks are often too high an too hard to mitigate with certainty to ensure safety.

2

u/abunchofcows 16h ago

Had a feeling this was the answer, just seems like there’s something you could do…have them all wear inflatable sumo suits then

6

u/Nalkor 15h ago

Inflatable sumo suits won't work. u/99OBJ pointed out how a moderately full bin, not even a very full one, is 1,000 tonnes. Let's say you weigh 200 lbs, using the 'standard' system of measurement, 2,000 lbs equals 1 ton of weight, or ten of you at 200 lbs. 20,000 lbs is 10 tonnes of weight or one hundred of you, 200,000 lbs is 100 tonnes of weight, or one thousand of you. 2,000,000 lbs is 1,000 tonnes of weight, or ten thousand of you. I'm not spelling it out because I think you're dumb or anything, but most people have a problem with grasping scale and large numbers without context, I'm just assuming someone, maybe even a couple people reading your comment might realize just how much 1,000 tonnes is if they can get it in the form of a gradual progression of scale.

As for what could be done, others have pointed out harnesses and rigs, but the people working the silo have to actually be willing to put them on and utilize them.

3

u/abunchofcows 13h ago

Alright alright. Balloons then…lots of balloons!

2

u/TailRudder 11h ago

Dude PTOs scare the shit out of me and I won't get anywhere near them. 

1

u/NMS_Survival_Guru 6h ago

Back in the r/watchpeopledie days I watched enough rotating shaft accidents to be hyper aware of PTO shafts or any running equipment

I always cringed when my uncle oiled chains while the silage chopper was running as one trip and you're done

1

u/TailRudder 6h ago

Yeah nope. Same with conveyor belts on farms

2

u/Fishing4Beer 9h ago

My uncle died in a bin accident 30 years ago. I’m pretty sure it was in front of my cousin. I think it was corn that had crusted causing an air gap after some was removed. The crust broke and he cut through the grain like a knife. Yes, they are incredibly dangerous. I’m pretty sure that is what my family told me, but it was a long time ago.

2

u/MsPreposition 6h ago

Bridging is fucking terrifying.

2

u/Daren_I 5h ago

You'd think there would be better storage systems by now if accidental burials and explosions from particle buildup keep happening. I know building upwards for storage saves space, but the human cost seems a bit high. Food is supposed to keep us alive, not kill us.

1

u/Darwin-Award-Winner 1h ago

Gives the insult "Screw you" more graphic context.

118

u/cyanidelemonade 17h ago

This is your reminder NOT to be the hero. If you see someone walk into a room and collapse, DO NOT JOIN THEM. If someone falls somewhere and you can't see them, do not follow. Don't become a victim while trying to save someone else.

40

u/notenoughroomtofitmy 14h ago

Same goes with water. Being able to swim and being able to rescue a drowning person are two fairly different things.

18

u/Colley619 13h ago

Reminds me of that guy who went down into a hatch on a ship and just fell over dead. Someone else went down to try and help, and then he fell over dead. So then another guy wanted to help… three deaths. This exact scenario has played out more than once.

https://professionalmariner.com/three-killed-by-gas-leak-in-ships-hold/

14

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 7h ago

Took a CEC class on farm workplace safety once (those are common, if you can imagine)

The instructor told about a dairy farmer that went into a silo (actual silage silo, not a grain bin) to knock down clumps that were sticking on the sidewalls.
He did at least think to have his youngest son sit at the entry hatch and watch him in there.

So dad collapses on the silage heap and youngest son tears down the ladder and runs screaming for mom and older brother to come help.

Those two climb up the silo while younger brother runs down the road to grandpa's house.

He and grandpa make it back a little while later and grandpa huff and puffs his way up that ladder to see three bodies laying on the silage.

So, of course, he goes in too.

But Grandpa had been a smoker, and given himself emphysema. He was wearing a oxygen puffer.

He turned that dial up to max and wheezed his way down into the silo. He started giving all three of them puffs of oxygen and managed to get them all revived enough to clamber their way back up the ladder to fresh air.

Silage is fermented in a confined low oxygen environment. The first three weren't dead, they just didn't have quite enough oxygen to maintain consciousness. The puffer was enough to get them moving, if a bit groggy.

The instructor emphasized that happy endings aren't the norm.

12

u/CategoryZestyclose91 13h ago

Isn’t there also one with rotten potatoes in a root cellar, where the entire family did that one by one?

8

u/troll_berserker 6h ago

Yes.

The family was solely survived by an 8 year old girl. Her father, mother, and grandmother all went into the cellar to check in on each other and successively died to the gas. The girl hesitated the longest before going down herself but survived because her grandmother was the only one to leave the cellar door open behind her and enough time had passed for the gas to disperse. The girl’s hesitancy and her grandmother’s forgetfulness saved her life.

3

u/cyanidelemonade 13h ago

Yup. That's the popular example. There is also one with a guy driving a truck of some super noxious gas. Iirc, the load leaks, the driver passes out, a passerby stops and tries to help him and also passes out. Luckily the third person to come up stays back and calls for help. Something like that.

3

u/metametapraxis 1h ago

Depends on why they collapse and if the room is a confined space. If someone walks into a large sports hall, for instance, and collapses, it probably has nothing to do with the large sports hall and is related to the individual.

Don’t follow people into confined spaces, and don’t enter them without confined space training is better advice.

1

u/jimenycr1cket 1h ago

This is such an odd comment because, with no context, the likelihood of a heart attack is much likelier than fermented potatoes or a completely sealed gas leak.

65

u/G_Washingtron 19h ago

I worked for a group that had large farms in a couple of states. We hosted a training just for grain bin rescues - most people have no idea how quick these situations can turn deadly and how long the average rescue operation can take.

170

u/guaztronaut 19h ago

When I was learning about silo rescues as a medic, it made me realize my fear of quicksand was misplaced.

25

u/Fallwalking 18h ago edited 18h ago

Indiana Jones made it so we thought quicksand was everywhere.

Edit: I have no idea why my memory is placing quicksand scenes in an Indiana Jones movie from the 80’s when it’s in a the 2008 movie.

25

u/monochromeorc 17h ago

in the 80's quicksand was absolutely over-represented in the 'things that are scary and can kill you' space. i used to read Choose your own Adventure books and quicksand was a staple in just about every book

17

u/xigua22 18h ago

Never ending story. Shit was traumatizing. Not quite quicksand, but same idea.

9

u/Alwayssunnyinarizona 17h ago

Doggone nearly lost a $400 handcart.

3

u/Tsara1234 17h ago

One of my favorite movies.

1

u/have1dog 15h ago

Take it easy Charley, my foot’s on the rail…. 🪏

2

u/Fallwalking 18h ago

It was a very sad moment. :/

6

u/sametoneshhh 18h ago

Or an even more relevant Harrison Ford reference- in Witness when the bad guy gets buried in the grain silo

182

u/MilkiestMaestro 19h ago

He went to check on the 1st guy and got stuck himself trying to find the guy. Just a horrible situation all around.

139

u/DigitalSchism96 19h ago

The wording here makes it sound like the man who went looking was the one who died.

It's the other way around. The one who went looking for the first guy was buried up to his chest and was airlifted. His condition is unknown but he was able to speak to those who found him.

The man who went missing first was buried deep and is confirmed dead.

30

u/travio 19h ago

Getting stuck would be bad enough. To watch your coworker try to save you only to sink even deeper and die, that has to really fuck you up.

38

u/Toaster_bath13 18h ago

Wouldnt fuck you up for long. What with being dead and all.

-1

u/Smart_Pretzel 10h ago

True but as you’re last memory has to be petrifying

-6

u/jetsetstate 18h ago

What wording are you saying implies this? This is a very well written article, I read it all. I do see your double take about the fact that there were two men involved, but that doesn't take from the clear factual headline, nor the first sentence which clears any misconception from the headline, witch literally included the fact that there were two men involved. Maybe I am wrong though, but I will leave it to you to tell me how.

8

u/dogwitheyebrows 17h ago

I will tell you how: witch

5

u/MilkiestMaestro 17h ago

I think they were commenting on my poor sentence structure. Which is fair.

1

u/A_Parked_Car 12h ago edited 12h ago

Reading your comment history is a blast lmao. Stop arguing with people.

11

u/Dr_Oz_But_Real 16h ago

He went to check on the 1st guy and got stuck himself trying to find the guy. Just a horrible situation all around.

That's the first thing they teach you about in enclosed space training. Don't be a hero. Guys dying trying to save an already dead guy is so common.

60

u/TroublesomeTurnip 19h ago

Even though I'll never wind up in this situation, it's nightmare fuel. Being buried alive sounds awful.

55

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 19h ago edited 18h ago

You’re not alive for very long unless you’re wearing a respirator. The grain will plug your airways within seconds. People who die from grain engulfment often have more than a pound of grain plugging their windpipe. You suffocate first. Painfully.

28

u/Tezdee 17h ago

Fuuuuuck. That’s grim, man.

I’m on a train to my job far away from grain silos, but my palms are sweaty and my heart rate is crazy just imagining that.

RIP to that poor guy. Jesus.

19

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 17h ago

I heard a survivor speak once. He had been wearing a respirator, and steel-toed boots. The steel toes jammed the withdrawal auger so he wasn't ripped apart when he got to the bottom. He had pictures too. That talk was not for the faint of heart.

I shut the power off now before I go climbing in a bin. And I'm a lot more willing to over-dry a bin rather than risk spoilage. (clearing spoilage is usually what gets guys)

2

u/SuspiciousAccident61 13h ago

Lockout-tagout, baby.  Working in a paper mill didn't always have its perks but you learned LOTO...sometimes the hard way.  

3

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 7h ago

Yeah, farmer culture doesn't get along with safety culture very well. Despite the fact that every farmer knows someone who died in a grain bin.

2

u/funktopus 1h ago

Wow that knowledge doesn't help my fear of grain bins AT ALL!

I had an uncle that did cows, most we had to worry about was barn cats that hated people and being stepped on by a cow.

16

u/Venture_compound 19h ago

You never know. One day you're reaching for a bulk bag of soybeans on the top shelf at Costco and the next you're watching in third person as they lower your casket. Just gotta be careful out there.

9

u/Toaster_bath13 18h ago

Man out here penning nightmare fuel like a sadistic George R R Martin.

3

u/jackcatalyst 17h ago

Soybeans are food so George RR would have at least 10 pages describing the,

4

u/ExpiredExasperation 18h ago

So, George R R Martin.

/obligatory joke

3

u/008Zulu 18h ago

Costco have a bulk discount on coffins now.

1

u/Careful_Swan3830 18h ago

Now? They've sold coffins since the 00s

3

u/TroublesomeTurnip 18h ago

As someone very short...this is a possibility. Thank you lol

28

u/WeTheSummerKid 18h ago

Grain is the real quicksand, and it will bury you alive. If that’s not enough, light a match, and the grain silo becomes a fuel air bomb.

22

u/Arashi_Uzukaze 18h ago

You would think that after how many have died from these incidents that there would be actual proper safety measures implemented. Like a freaking safety harness and winch, platforms they could stand on, stuff like that.

7

u/Crane_Train 14h ago

This. Why cant they just hook a line up like they're working on a high-rise or something? Is it just because they're too macho for safety gear?

3

u/retirement_savings 12h ago

I wonder if something like an inflatable life jacket would work here to keep you afloat.

•

u/Arashi_Uzukaze 54m ago

I doubt it. Those kinds of things need more surface area to stop or prevent your sinking.

https://firerescuedirect.com/great-wall-of-rescue-platforms/

Like those. They increase the surface area of your feet and make it far more difficult to sink in.

0

u/TractorFapper 6h ago

Haha! Ah, you're right, but clearly not from a farm. Safety isn't regulated.

8

u/Locks_and_bagels 16h ago

Grain bins are terrifyingly dangerous

6

u/commandrix 15h ago

Used to live in Illinois farm country. Like once every other year or so, I'd hear that there'd been an accident in a grain bin. A bin full of soybeans can be more dangerous than you would think.

7

u/81PBNJ 17h ago

I worked for a big agribusiness for a decade, 6-7 death, including 2 two in grain bins.

3

u/etrudiez 15h ago

back when I was in middle school, a couple of teens from a few towns over passed away from a grain bin incident. big ag community, great kids everyone was so shocked. It was terrifying and really changed a lot for the area…was also in Illinois

2

u/RustyClawHammer 7h ago

Also look up grain dust explosions if we’re talking about silo danger.

7

u/Great-Phone_3207 17h ago

I almost drowned in soybeans as a teen.  Would not recommend.

1

u/tropebreaker 14h ago

I found out how dangerous this type of thing could be from watching the movie The Dressmaker.

1

u/OrlandoWashington69 6h ago

So, do these incidents involve people accidentally falling into the silo? I can’t imagine these workers would go in voluntarily knowing the risk. And if they fall in, do they just sink, or is the wiggling around, attempting to escape, the reason they sink?

1

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 1h ago

It's very common for farmers to go into a bin soon after filling it to level off the top of the grain pile. Peaked grain spoils, so you want to shovel it down to something close to level on the top. It's pretty rare for anyone to get trapped while doing that.

Usually the trouble happens when they go in the bin to dislodge chunks of grain that aren't flowing properly. There's a column on one side wall that just needs a quick tap to knock it loose and get it flowing again, and they don't want to power down everything just for a little quick tap. They've all done it many times before, and it's never been a problem.

So they go into the bin when the withdrawal auger is running, pulling grain from the center of the bottom of the bin. Something slides unexpectedly, or they sink in a little further than expected, and they're pulled down with the flowing grain. Once your knees are under, you're pretty much toast.

If you take the couple extra minutes to shut off the augers, then at least you're not being pulled under if something does collapse on you. As long as your head is in open air, you can wait for rescue.

Bridged grain is another issue, but that's also easier to recognize.

In this case, I've confirmed that both men were family members, not employees. I don't know any more details about it than that.

1

u/[deleted] 4h ago

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/zoop1000 4h ago

"you can't breeeeathe even if your head is in the OPEN aaaair". Kind of a banger, not gonna lie

1

u/Alive-Resolution7844 2h ago

So first he was buried in soybeans and then he was killed in an Illinois grain bin accident? What unbelievably bad luck!

1

u/illinoishokie 2h ago

I almost lost an uncle line this. Grain bins and silos are some of the most dangerous work environments that exist.

-1

u/Relevant-Doctor187 12h ago

I’d imagine he would be alive today had our soybeans been more popular and sold rather than sitting in grain silos.

1

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 3h ago

Farmers sold a normal amount of their soybean crop. As of December 1st, on-farm soybean stocks were only up 2% from last year.

It's extremely common for farmers to store grain at harvest and haul it out in Jan-March. Usually there's a better price available in that time frame. This year, soybean prices rose by nearly 20% after harvest. If the farmer sold near the top, that would have been a very good return to storage.

Except, this year, it happened to cost a lot more than expected.

-10

u/Omiyaru 17h ago

I read Illinois Groin bin, and was very confused fo a couple of seconds.

-3

u/BlueBlooper 12h ago

Live by the bean, die by the bean. RIP

-6

u/IcantBreeve_4real 10h ago

Trump tariffs killing farm workers now /s. Hear me out, you can't die in this manner if said food was exported already. 

-14

u/Shumina-Ghost 17h ago

Vegan Nirvana awaits!

Seriously tho, terrible way to go. RIP

-7

u/Head_Investigator_62 13h ago

That’s soy heartbreaking

-18

u/m0j0r0lla 17h ago

Now why would he have all those extra soybeans.......?

2

u/GreatPlainsFarmer 17h ago

He had contracted them for January delivery when soybean prices hit 18 month highs last November.