Worker rescued four hours after becoming trapped in soybeans
Published: January 5, 2006
A 21-year-old grain terminal worker who became buried up to his neck in soybeans was rescued about four hours after he went into a storage bin to investigate what was clogging its auger feed and became trapped in the beans, officials said.
“He looks really good,” Larry Swalheim, chief executive officer of Landmark Services Cooperative, said after his employee, Dustin Bunch, was pulled out Wednesday afternoon.
“He was feeling fine,” Madison fire Lt. Tom Schaller said. “He was tired, of course, because he struggled.”
Bunch was taken to University of Wisconsin Hospital, where he was treated and released.
Schaller, who sat atop the bin near its entry hatch and directed rescue efforts by Madison and McFarland firefighters said Bunch had been in a very dangerous position.
“You know what quicksand is?” Schaller asked. “That’s pretty much what it was.”
Terminal manager Ben Fenwick, 24, went into the bin to find out what had happened to Busch and kept soybeans away from Bunch’s mouth and nose until other help arrived.
Firefighters placed a harness on Bunch to keep him from sinking any further into the soybeans, Madison Fire Department spokeswoman Bernadette Galvez said.
Madison Technical Rescue team members Cory Reno and James Stelter stayed with Bunch inside the bin and gave him a breathing mask, connected by hose to a tank on the ground, to help him breathe.
Bunch “was actually pretty calm for the situation,” although he was buried to the chin with only one arm free, Reno said.
Reno and Stelter stuck seven or eight shovels upright in the soybeans in a circle around Bunch as a makeshift dam to keep the beans from sliding toward Bunch.
Plywood sheets were then sent down into the bin, and Reno and Stelter used a sledgehammer to pound the sheets into the soybeans, making a better dam.
A sewer vacuum truck was used to suck up soybeans around him, Reno said, and firefighters cut holes into the outside of the bin to release soybeans.
He was eventually pulled from the bin in the harness, and lowered to the ground.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: