has anyone else heard/read the NPR series Buried In Grain?
my god, I can’t believe this keeps going on: teenagers, children! being sent to work in grain bins while machinery keeps the grain flowing, sucking them down like quicksand. worse, in fact.
it’s so preventable, lots of blame to go around. I pit anyone and everyone responsible.
One Story Here
Yes, I’ve been listening to it on my commute in. I had no idea this was a real danger these people faced. Fascinating program.
Do they show the final shootout in WITNESS often?
reading about how hard it is to get them out, once they are trapped even just up to their waists, is such a horror show.
I can’t believe this goes on. 
That was the first thing I thought of when I saw the title of this thread.
:shudder:
Yeah, because video clips are awesome on the radio.
On NPR? Probably not.
In fact, I caught two segments about it on All Things Considered and one on Morning Edition. The Harrison Ford/Kelly McGillis film was not mentioned.
Yeah- the SIX hours it took to get the guy buried to his chin, and he only survived because someone put a bucket over his head to give him breathing space?
We used to call it “beating down the grain”, but yes, it is pervasive in the Midwest. “Sticky” (i.e. rotten) corn is bad, but soybean is actually worse for this as it rots even more easily, sticking to the wall and leaving voids which can entrap a worker. As for being preventable, this is absolutely true; methods for bulk grain handling (adapted from sewage handling, energetic/oxidizer processing, and polymer manufacturing) are well established and used by corporate bakeries and food processing plants to minimize human intrusion into the silo, especially while any fill and unload operations. (Aside from danger of being caught in the grain there is the potential for dust inhalation and ignition, and working around unshrouded rotating equipment.) However, this would require retrofitting grain silos which would be a moderately expensive undertaking by an industry that counts pennies and trims costs wherever feasible.
BTW, all of the rotten cereals that are extracted are not disposed as unusable. They are processed to make “vegetable” oil and shortening; bear that in mind next time you are chowing down on some deep-fried or commercially baked food. You are literally eating rotten sludge from the bottom of the barrel.
Stranger
just working in the bins in bad what with the heat and the dust.
the kid who survived spent those 6 hours knowing his 2 friends were under the corn.
there is another story where they explain why it takes so long to get them out.
*Grain rescues are difficult because grain bins are massive - some are four stories high and higher and twice as wide. They hold thousands of bushels of grain, which exert enormous pressure…
Victims have suffered broken legs and dislocated arms when rescuers tried to yank them out. Untrained, inexperienced and ill-equipped rescuers have also become victims, succumbing to the power of the grain.*
I could have done a better job with this damn pitting - I have known for a long time people usually won’t click on a link and read, you need to copy it for them.
and I was more sad than angry when I posted, not sure why I put it in the pit. nothing else seemed right, I guess.
reading the story I linked … it was so horrific, about those 3 kids in Illinois, then you read about a father who is an activist because his son died the exact same way 17 years ago.
for god’s sake, Stranger’s post is pretty technical, but it looks to me like all they need to do (usually?) is NOT have the machinery on while people are IN the damn grain bin. when it is running to empty out the bottom, you get a horrible suction in the grain that can pull you under in 60 seconds.
holy fuck.
Well, the problem is that, although when you turn off the unload feeder the suction stops, but so does the flow of grain, so you have to repeatedly start and stop and then send people in to beat the clumping grain apart, which takes much longer, generally while trucks are sitting around and waiting. And even when the grain is static, people can still be sucked down into voids and get stuck (usually not deeper than mid-thigh, but still).
BTW, this is mostly a problem with concrete silos. Most steel silos don’t store grain long enough to get that rotted, are generally fit with shakers or sweeps so that no one has to enter the silo during unload, and material doesn’t tend to stick to the walls as much as it does to concrete. Steel–especially stainless steel–is also cheaper and easier to clean, which is why it is almost universally used for food handling equipment. Some concrete silos have steel liners, but again this is additional cost for which there is no specific return on investment, so relatively few granaries equip with liners. I think steel tanks or liners are required in the EU, but not in the US.
This is an issue that the food processing industry (among others) had to deal with decades ago, and came up with solutions the value of which no one questions today. However, farm and agriculture is often exempt from OSHA regulations under the theory that it is more of a family-run industry for which the regulations would be onerous. The reality is that most grain agriculture is run by giant cooperatives and corporations which simply don’t apply safety equipment and regulations because of the cost or time required.
Stranger
Farming is incredibly dangerous work what with the large animals, machinery, isolation, not to mention the agricultural chemicals.
Falling in a modern pig manure pit is nearly guaranteed death as well.
Even in small farming communities it is common to see a number of men missing digits or even arms.
A friend of mine accidently killed his toddler when he was pitching manure out of the barn and the little one ran by the door unexpectedly. The guilt that family carried came to destroy three familoy members, I think.
How does it happen when the danger is already known?. The same way car accidents or kitchen accidents happen. A person is doing the commonplace, everyday sort of thing and forgets to pay attention.
That’s part of it.
The other part, I suppose, would be those people who always think they can beat the odds.
Been there done that, but on a much smaller scale. One of my jobs as a young teenager on the family farm was to stomp around on the seed wheat as my father and uncle poured it into the storage bins. Got myself stuck several times. Of course, they were much smaller bins, it never got up to more than my waist, the grain was dry and my uncle was all of 6 feet away, but still…it’s a scary feeling.
That would make grain processing less profitable.
in this case it was kids who had just been hired, at least one was too young to be legal, and nobody told them.
the father of one of those that died had gone to the place and thought his son would be sweeping out empty bins, that was why he let him take the job. if you read the story, you can see it was not their fault (the 3 boys) and it was absolutely preventable.
yes.
There’s an earlier villain-buried-in-grain scene in Carl Dreyer’s 1932 film Vampyr.
Clearly not the same situation described on NPR. I missed that, and I’ll have to look into it.
Exactly right. Wheat and corn are heavily subsidized, precisely because they are commercially viable for export, feed, sugar production and byproducts for fuel. You don’t see healthier foods being subsidized, nor are people dying because they got buried in an apple cart.
I heard Wonder Bread helped build strong bodies 12 ways. How many ways does it help destroy them?
I’m a farmer and I live surrounded by ranchers so, yes, I know that it’s dangerous work. However, you can minimize the risks and the point of the NPR piece was that the companies that own the massive grain elevators are ignoring all OSHA standards and consistently violating safety regulations.