And yet earlier, Frank Norris’s story ‘The Pit’, from which D. W. Griffith made a 1909 short progressive film, ‘A Corner in Wheat’, which included a gruesome judgmental end for a speculator in an elevator.
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Excuse me if this sounds impertinent but… Is there any god damned subject on the face of the planet that you are not an expert on? Jeez Louise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not doubting you… I’m just in awe. If this were a TV show though, you would have just jumped the shark.
Anyway, yeah, dangerous shit that seems like it could/should be preventable.
I can’t believe I’m the first one to point out that the guy’s name who died in the grain silo was Whitebread. Crazy.
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I would have thought it was fairly clear in Economics 101 that heavy subsidies were not an indicator of commercially viable.
That’s right, there have never been subsidies on milk, eggs, vegetables or fruit. :smack:
The granular products e.g. grains, flour, sugar, fertiliser etc are more dangerous because small particle size means less air, and the silos tend to be larger. But you can get caught in a feed hopper conveying apples, oranges, ginger, pineapples, potatoes, tomatoes etc under exactly the same conditions.
I spent a summer “beating” grain silos and lumping sack feed when I was a year younger than the subject of the news story linked in the o.p. Our only safety equipment was a length of clothesline which was held by one hand (which would have been completely ineffectual if you actually got stuck) and ill-fitting duck boots. I’m a little surprised that it is still permitted today, but as pointed out earlier, agriculture is largely exempt from OSHA regulations, even though the cost of compliance would likely be well paid in reduction of lost time and medical costs due to injury. It is just short-sighted penny pinching that allows this to continue to be a problem.
Stranger
Fruits and vegetables are not stored in massive bulk conditions, partially because of the damage that would do to the fruit and partially because they just aren’t typically stored for long durations like grains and pulses are. Although there are hazards with handling and processing of fruits and vegetables, these tend to be more of the repetitive injury variety rather than being sucked into a three story silo of pineapples or crushed by fifty bushels or oranges.
But yes, fine bulk materials–both food and inert–carry all of the hazards of handling fluids along with some unique hazards (potential explosion from dust, fermentation-induced combustion, toxic gas production and oxygen displacement from rotting grain, mold, et cetera). However, most other industries which do bulk material handling have roundly adopted safety equipment and protocols which limit the degree of hazard. The agricultural industry has, by and large, refused to embrace even the most simple tools and enforce their usage.
Stranger
Jesus Christ, I had to be 16 to work at the local grocery store. WTF is wrong with our society when they allow 14-year-olds to work in such hazardous occupations?
My mom and her brothers have no sense of smell from the particulates involved in farming. 1930s unpowered amish farm. She also lost a sister and eventually her mother to a kerosene fire from her sister filling a lamp and lighting it without checking to see if there was any kerosene spilled on the [oilcloth] tablecloth. It took 3 years for my grandmother to finish dying.
When growing up and visiting the various farming cousins [my fathers side also had farmers in the married in side of the family] we were very restricted on where on the farm we could play. Absolutely nowhere need cows, pigs or horses, nowhere near the silos or feed bins. Pretty much we could play with chickens, in the small kitchen garden and in the grass yard. On the farm behind our summer houses on the lake when I was 6 and again when I was about 11 farmers got killed by falling into farm equipment. Back then unless it was reasonably minor [missing hand or foot] they didn’t bother calling an ambulance, they called for the undertakers to come haul the body away to stitch it back together for the funeral. With a call out of half an hour, you tend to bleed out.
Mostly because farm kids grow up working on their family farms, so there is an assumption that they know what they are doing. Plus a fear that regulations preventing hiring kids would be expanded to prevent kids from working for their parents.
Would mandated safety gear, perhaps something similar to climbing equipment with strong lines connecting workers to the top, prevent these tragedies? If so, it seems like a pretty inexpensive way to save lives.
Safety gear is required, and in the article linked in the o.p., was available but unused. However, the real solution is to minimize personnel intrusion into the loaded silo at all, and to prohibit entry during fill and unload operations at all.
Stranger
IIRC, the entry during loading and unloading is also prohibited, and is as ignored as all the other safety equipment and rules. The real solution is to make the penalties for disobeying them so draconian that companies watching their bottom lines will decide that it’s no longer worth it to disobey them.
This is exactly right. It’s reasons like this why the offshore drilling and exploration industry is so damn careful not to spill a drop of hydraulic fluid into the ocean or whatever, because the fines for even a trivial infraction just aren’t worth it.
You gotta admit, it’d make a hell of a reality show.
When I was in high school something like this happened. A school visiting from another state was visiting the local silo and the kids were running around inside on the rice. Unfortunately a worker who was unaware of the visit turned on the fans. One kid was sucked under and a number were trapped. I really feel for the poor bugger who flipped the switch.
In any real industry, people would lose their jobs and go to jail. The stories are just horrifying.
I work in many, many factories and have never seen ANY equivalent accepted safety hazard. It’s just beyond belief someone would allow such a hideously dangerous activity to take place.
My first thought reading the OP was “What countries is this happening in?” imagining various developing nations.
Then I read on. Holy crap!
Reasons for ag subsidies per my understanding:
[ol]
[li]Residual cultural affection for farming and idyllic rural life, from the Jeffersonian ideal on up.[/li][li]Agricultural states have lots of senators.[/li][li]Internally, cheap food is a hell of a safety valve for preventing widespread dissent; externally, cheap food is a hell of a foreign relations lever via aid or export.[/li][li]As the rest of this thread is testament to, farming is a miserable occupation, and without free capital and security, the mechanization and consolidation that makes farming tolerable to our modern sensibilities wouldn’t be possible.[/li][/ol]
How are the large OSHA fines being reduced/overturned? Is it an administrative appeals process? That seems to be where the pitting belongs. I don’t hold much hope that these families are able to get much cash or any solace from wrongful death civil lawsuits.
I found the ending to “Witness” very powerful and scary because I knew a kid who died in a grain bin accident. Was silent all the way back to rez.
So? That still doesn’t mean they should be allowed to work the dangerous stuff. Hell, you had to be 18 to use the box crusher.
This. Really, this seems dangerous enough that minors shouldn’t be allowed to do it, period. And anyone working inside these grain silos should have safety harnesses tied into some secure point well above the grain, so that they’d at least be able to hang onto their safety rope if they started getting pulled under. People shouldn’t be dying for want of safety measures whose cost is trivial.