Over the last four years, more than 500 firefighters have been trained to rescue people trapped in grain bins located on-farm or at commercial grain terminals.
BeGrainSafe was developed by the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association (CASA) and has been delivered to volunteer fire departments in four provinces, including Saskatchewan.
“Every year across Canada, we are averaging between six and eight fatalities from grain entrapment,” said Rob Gobeil, CASA agricultural health and safety specialist.
A spike in grain entrapments in 2015 led to CASA approaching provincial canola grower associations to develop a rescue program. The Prairie Agricultural Machinery Institute (PAMI) in Humboldt built a safety training trailer that is used as a teaching aid.
Dealing with a grain entrapment is a difficult situation for rescue crews that usually handle fires or accidents involving vehicles or other machinery.
“You have to go in the top of the bin, the hole is small and it’s dark in there,” said Rick Taillieu, manager of grower relations and extension with Alberta Canola. “We want to do this training and make sure there are more rural fire departments who know what to do in this situation.”
The Canadian Canola Growers Association hosted an on-line presentation of the 2019 film “Silo” last month. Set in the U.S. Midwest, the film provides a dramatic account of the rescue of a farmer who is sucked beneath flowing corn and is trapped up to his chest.
A similar situation occurred in real-life to Winkler, Manitoba area farmer Randy Froese over ten years ago. He was buried under two to three feet of mouldy edible beans in a hopper bin. The rescue took 45 minutes, but it was a difficult and very stressful process that resulted in a week’s stay in hospital followed by months of recovery.
“Every situation is going to be different, but ours was very panicked—there was a lot of stuff going on,” Froese said. “Because it doesn’t happen often, our employees and first responders were not trained for something like this.”
The Winkler fire department has undergone training and have a grain entrapment tube for practice.
In addition to training for rescue crews, the BeGrainSafe program also has a producer awareness component.
“It takes between three and five seconds to get trapped in flowing grain,” Gobeil said. “Once you have sunk past your knees in flowing grain, you are basically stuck and you need to be rescued at that point. The odds of getting out on your own are pretty slim and the deeper you go, the far less likely you are to get out on your own.”
There should always be a communication plan prior to entering a grain bin with plenty of contact between those inside and outside of the bin.
(CJWW)