Sometimes in more ways than one...
Posted on 10/30/2012 3:26:59 AM PDT by DemforBush
STERLING, Mich. — Tommy Osier, 18, a popular but indifferent student, was still a year from graduating from high school, and that was no sure thing. Farm work paid him $7.40 an hour, taught him discipline and gave him new skills. He had begun talking about making a life in farming...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Spent my teen years on a farm. We were told that silos were death traps. Much like a loaded gun you had to be careful around them, respect them, or they’ll kill you. Either from falling, entrapment/engulfment, or low oxygen death.
Automobiles and women are also death traps.
I worked on a dairy farm in high school many years ago. When the family bought the farm there was a silo filled with corn silage that had been there several years. We dug it out from the bottom but never went inside to do it. After it was empty we filled it with alphala and my friend (owners son) and I got inside as the alphala was blown in from the top and we used a hose to wet it down, stomp it down and throw rock salt all around. It was itchy work and as soon as we got out we hosed each other down. The old silos, like this one, were higher and thinner than the newer ones. We were always warned that you had to be careful around the silo but usually because of the danger of methane gas if the grain was not packed very tight. That’s why we stomped it.
Besides getting a void inside near the bottom that can collapse, they can also develop a false top dome that is thin, but making one think it is full.....you push on it, step on it and it collapses...dangerous stuff..
Interesting the writer of this article blames Republicans for silo deaths. The rules were relaxed during the Obama admin, but Pubbies are blamed anyway. I’m sure the deaths were caused by Republican congressmen advocating lax standards and more silo deaths. (snort)
“Automobiles and women are also death traps.”
You forgot liquor....and drugs.
The annual number of such accidents rose throughout the past decade, reaching a peak of at least 26 deaths in 2010, before dropping somewhat since.
People die. It's always a tragedy, and it's always something that should be avoided. But it happens. We are trying to live in a world where no one gets sick, no one dies, and no sad events ever occur.
The growth of government is fueled by this mentality. We need pure food and drugs, we need clean water and air. Our workplaces must be safe. Our forests must be protected. And on and on and on.
In one night in Chicago, 26 people can get shot. In one year, 26 people die in farm accidents. I am unwilling to beg government to step in and pass more regulations, or to make teenage labor illegal, or to somehow cripple our farming industry in an effort to prevent death from stalking the land.
Stuff happens.
This is a big problem here when the cold weather often makes the silage freeze solid part way up the silo, leaving a void in the bottom of the silo. Some of the older silos used to even create a partial vacuum above the silage. I know several people who had close calls when trying to free up frozen silage.
This is something “new” and “unexpected”? My grandfather was a farmer (corn), my mom managed the farm after he passed, I never lived on a farm, but even I grew up knowing they were dangerous - even if I didn’t understand why at the time (I assumed because if you fell from the top it was a long way down).
That said, prayers for the kids’ family. Any death of a child is horrible.
Wetting it down? I don’t understand. When I worked on a farm, we did all we cold do to get alfalfa dry before we stored it, else the moisture helped to create just the right conditions with pressure of the weight, to cause the stored alfalfa to spontaneously combust. I knew of several barns that burned as a result.
Sometimes in more ways than one...
Well said. People want safety guaranteed, and it is impossible to do so. To expect government to do so means huge bureaucracies, costs and other overhead leading to inefficiency.
And people still die and are hurt.
Liberals want to legislate common sense, and it cannot be done.
Best friend in jr. high died in a silo due to poisonous gases from crops, as I recall.
It’s an evil Republican article. Democrats want to “enforce safety laws” around silos and evil Republicans want kids to go into them and die.
Seriously, I’ve never lived in farm areas but my mom grew up there. I remember as a little girl my mom telling me about family members who was crushed or died in silo accidents. They are very dangerous places and I’m from NY and I knew that.
Barring all those stories, did no one ever see “Witness”?
I lost a high school friend in a farm accident. It was a sad thing but no one assigned blame or anything because it was a lapse of common sense on his part and that’s all there was to it.
He died when he crawled under the bucket of a front end loader full of rocks and a hydraulic line chose that moment to give out as they do. We all knew better than to do such a thing but he just had a lapse in judgement and chose the quick and easy way over climbing back up onto the tractor and moving it.
Quite frankly, I'd rather do that 100 times as have to clean out the bottom of the bean bins in the spring. You haven't smelled bad until you've had to go in on that one. Dead and bloated carcass basking in the sun has nothing on rotten soybeans.
Not as many die in silos as die in a small abortion clinic? Wonder what the Commie Times thinks about that?
Pray for America
Public schools are death traps for the youth of this nation in more ways than one. Far more young people die in the public schools or as a result of improper teaching or bad influences from the public schools than EVER died in a silo.
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