![]() “I had that ladder and I had that pipe, slid down on the corn and took the pipe to push down a couple of those little lumps and that is when the corn took off and that is when I got stuck,” he recalled. Last October, he was clearing out a clog in his grain bin, when suddenly he was trapped. But it happened so fast,” he told the Fox 9 Investigators. Jerry Schwarzrock is one of the lucky ones. He had a spotter who walked away for a couple minutes. Gregory Fleck died in a bin near Glencoe. In Belle Plaine, Rodger Slater, was smothered while unloading soybeans. Gerald Chisholm, became trapped in a bin while working alone near Ada.īrandon Schaefer, also alone, died while trying to break apart frozen corn near Albany. The other fatalities follow a familiar pattern. Purdue will be releasing its most recent report in a few weeks.Ī few days before Christmas, on a farm near Millerville, three members of the Boesl family died after exposure to toxic fumes on top of their silo. But, a researcher from Purdue University told the FOX 9 Investigators Minnesota is currently leading the nation in these types of accidents, but declined to give out its specific numbers. There is no government agency that tracks accidents on small farms. With low prices, farmers are also holding on to their crops longer. ![]() Three other people were rescued.Ī wet harvest has meant longer drying times in the bin, more mold, and clumping. Since last summer, nine people in Minnesota have died in grain bins or silos, according to sheriff reports tracked down by the FOX 9 Investigators. The last few months have been some of the most dangerous in recent memory in Minnesota. But, a researcher from Purdue University told the FOX 9 Investigators Minnesota is currently leading the nation in these types of accidents, but declined to give out its specific numbers for 2019 since Purdue will be releasing those numbers in a few weeks. ![]() According to Purdue University, there were 193 Minnesota cases in the last 56 years (Iowa is first with 245 fatalities, Indiana is second with 225). Historically, Minnesota ranks third in the nation in documented agricultural-confined space related accidents, which include grain entrapment cases. Since 1976, Congress has attached a rider to OSHA appropriations prohibiting the agency or its state affiliates from regulating safety or investigating accidents on farms with 10 or fewer non-family employees. There is seldom much of an investigation beyond a local sheriff’s report. In fact, most of the farmers killed in farm accidents die alone. Michele wonders why there wasn't anyone else with him, "What was so important that they left him to work alone?” “I wanted to go and hold him but they wouldn’t let me," his mother said. It may have been hours before his body was discovered. But according to a Nicollet County Sheriff’s report, Landon’s jeans likely got caught in the auger, pulling him into the blades, both his legs were mutilated below the knee. He was cleaning corn out of a large grain bin, with an auger sweeping across the floor. On Aug. 14, Landon Gran, 18, went to work for a neighbor just two miles down the road near St. “I know he fought like hell, he was a fighter. "People can tell me all day long that he went fast and I know he didn't," she told the FOX 9 Investigators. For Michele Gran, there is no comfort in a fiction of her son’s final moments, there’s only the brutal truth of how he died last summer in a grain bin.
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