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 ...
How many deaths caused by printing presses in the United States in 2010? I'll bet on more.... And murders in Chicago - Philly and LA's inner cities? That would be more than 26 in a week... every week - every week for years... No one in flyover needs 'pity' from the hateful New York Times.
To add my own story;
In 1974, a friend lost his father and brother to an ammonia leak. It was a Catholic school, so the entire school walked across the street to the viewing and then we had the funeral during class hours later that day. Very sad times for that family.
Of course, this enters very deep waters.
If a company can make more money through automation, it will develop or purchase equipment that helps them do that.
If a company can increase workplace safety through better equipment, will it make that purchase? Should the government force it to?
The Progressives in the early 20th century got government invovled in business, trying to force companies to treat people better, even at the cost of corporate profits. Ultimately, this is why cars are safer (and more expensive) and why a lot of OTC medications are only available if the pharmacist hands it to you (meth addicts might buy too many if they were just on a shelf). This is why cribs are recalled, why toy chemistry sets are now quite boring, and why you can't buy blood sausage at the supermarket.
This article is an attempt to get government regulations in place, so that farmers are forced to spend extra money on newer, miracle silos. It's not going to help the profit margin of the family farm. It's an extra expense, courtesy of your friendly government.
But, as the Liberals always say: "If it saves one life ..."
The choice is simple: Should government control how private enterprise operates? Business operates on the basis of profit, and so safety is not necessarily their top priority. But that becomes a lever for the Liberals who want to control private production -- they use "safety" as their way into the game.
WOW! I am saddened when I hear of incidents like this happening. Silo/grain elevator work is dangerous.
Used to live in Sterling and went to school with Tommy’s relatives,worked on the farms in the Standish /Sterling area. Silo’s/grain elevators/grain storage are hot, dusty, and many times cause’s one to lose sense of direction.
My sincere heartfelt condolences go out to the Osier family.
Silos do blow up from time to time, too.
So do grain bins.
Methane gas is a problem, but dust is the worst.
In the first pic, it looks like the car crashed over a guy with long hair.
How expensive is a body harness mounted on an electric winch, on which an individual can lower himself down and loosen the contents of the silo from above the stuck pile?
The whole idea of doing that kind of work from below the level of the contents seems very foolish, even stupid.
It's not just silos. I've seen loggers stand on the pile of logs and kick at them to start them rolling. Once in awhile they couldn't get off the pile fast enough. Or air up the old split rims on trucks without a cage. And you thought Oddjobs hat would take your head off, imagine a heavy steel ring doing the same thing.
You were making hay (dried bails of food material) these guys are talking about silage (saurkraut for cattle).
Yes, and after the meaningful changes were implemented, the plant safety crews continued to grow, which required they start inventing problems to solve.
I spent my youth on a farm in Kansas and spent some time inside the round silos. The stored grain will get damp and develpes a crust so when the farmers remove the grain from the bottom of the silo, the crust holds in place and must be ‘stomped on’ to get it to the auger in the bottom of the silo. The grain is then taken to a drying station and returned after dried. I lost an uncle when he fell through the crust and it collapsed in on top of him and he suffocated.
I was raised on a dairy farm in Wisconsin in the 40’s , 50’s and early 60’s.
We had silos—which were for SILAGE-—NOT grain.
We NEVER pulled material from the bottom of the silo. We always climbed the ladder rungs to the top of the silage and threw silage down the chute which encompassed the ladder. The only problem we had was that the rungs of the ladder could be slick with frost in the wintertime. The rule was to go slowly- and carefully.
GRAIN BINS are an entirely different structure. They are shorter—squat in construction, and I don’t ever remember having a problem with grain freezing and causing any kind of ‘cave’ under such.
We had large wooden oat bins on the 2nd floor of the barn, with removeable boards at the ‘door’ where we scooped out the grain we needed to feed to the dairy cows and other animals and to mix with other items we used to grind our own feed.
We had temporary cribs made of printing paper pallets, snow fencing and support wire. Those held dry, UNSHELLED corn on the cob. They were used first and were all gone long before spring. We ground our own feed & used the entire cob full of corn, along with other items.
I don’t remember a single farm accident of any kind involving grain bins when I lived on the farm.
I am sorry this young man was killed. Grain bins have been in use for over 100 years in the metal version-——much longer in the wooden version as part of the barn. They are not a problem, IMO.
“If you’re born to hang, you’ll never drown!”
A shoutout to ridethemiles:
I grew up on a farm, where I learned that:
horned catttle will gore you,
cattle can trample you.
Tractors can overturn.
Pigs can chase and gore you.
Horses can kick you.
You can fall off of horses (Which I did many times.)
Rattlers can bite you.
Copperheads can bite you.
Water Moccasins can bite you.
Let’s see, oh yeah, chicken and geese can peck you.
Sticking your fingers into moving objects is not a good idea.
Ice on a pond can crack.
etc etc etc
If you want to eliminate danger in your life, go find a safe place and lock yourself up.
Well, storing it in a silo is not much different than storing it in a barn. Alfalfa is alfalfa, whether used for silage or hay.
Some jobs are just dangerous. That is how it is. Liberals just cannot accept that, because in Utopia, nobody dies because of some unexpected thing.
LOL...adams apple and “man hands”...:)
Great post. Loved it. To the point.
Silos have nothing on bush hogs. I have lost two family members (uncle, great uncle) to them. Barbed wire plus bush hogs can kill you in a heartbeat.
I worked in a sawmill and that’s a dangerous place. If there were as many sawmills as there are farms, there would be hundreds of sawmill deaths per year.
I ended up with a couple of broken ribs while 100% within safety procedures. I was in the chipper room when the chipper caught a log and smacked it against the shroud. The end of the log busted off and spun through the air and put me down hard and I was behind the chipper in the marked “safe” zone.
One of the old timers who had been a chopper pilot in Vietnam suggested getting some flak jackets for anybody who had to be in there.
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