How to save someone trapped in a grain bin

[RayIN]

That is the bad part of living in a small town and being on the fire or ambulance, you might know the people on the call you are going on.

Even for a small town, we averaged about 350 calls a year and I retired in 2003 with 21 years. Plenty of things in my head that luckily don’t bother me.

i was on our vol. fire dept. for 17 yrs. I'm now 83. Sadly the bad stuff does come back_. Some nights, no sleep.

 

[Sprinkler Fitter]

i was on our vol. fire dept. for 17 yrs. I'm now 83. Sadly the bad stuff does come back_. Some nights, no sleep.

Sorry it affects you, I’m hoping it doesn’t ever get to me. Wife’s dad was a state trooper, he drank allot I think because of what he saw for 35 years.

Retired from it 22 years ago, the last 2 years we had 3 dead in a house fire each year. No smoke alarms in one of those fires, we did what we could do but we didn’t save them.

 

[RayIN]

Sorry it affects you, I’m hoping it doesn’t ever get to me. Wife’s dad was a state trooper, he drank allot I think because of what he saw for 35 years.

Retired from it 22 years ago, the last 2 years we had 3 dead in a house fire each year. No smoke alarms in one of those fires, we did what we could do but we didn’t save them.

One particular call bothers me most. It was a mobile home fire, fully engulfed when the pumper arrived.
When the fire was out we were inside putting out smoldering spots.
One fireman said "there's a soft spot in the floor here".
He was standing on a victim that was covered with debris.

Very few citizens know a mobile home/trailer fire can go from ignition to fully-engulfed in 4 minutes.
Smoke detectors are vital to living to tell about getting out of a mobile home/trailer fire!!!

 

[gsganzer]

Smoke and CO2 detectors. Simple devices that save lives. Same with fire extinguishers. Be smart, have them available and use them. More importantly, train your family in their importance and use!

 

[RayIN]

Smoke and CO2 detectors. Simple devices that save lives. Same with fire extinguishers. Be smart, have them available and use them. More importantly, train your family in their importance and use!

That's another fallacy. A small (< than 10#) extinguisher is designed to suppress fire while you are exiting the structure, not to put the fire out.

 

[ultrarunner]

Sorry it affects you, I’m hoping it doesn’t ever get to me. Wife’s dad was a state trooper, he drank allot I think because of what he saw for 35 years.

Retired from it 22 years ago, the last 2 years we had 3 dead in a house fire each year. No smoke alarms in one of those fires, we did what we could do but we didn’t save them.

Sad because so often I find smoke alarms disabled… as a property manager I care more about your family than the parents or so it seems.

 

[Sprinkler Fitter]

One particular call bothers me most. It was a mobile home fire, fully engulfed when the pumper arrived.
When the fire was out we were inside putting out smoldering spots.
One fireman said "there's a soft spot in the floor here".
He was standing on a victim that was covered with debris.

Very few citizens know a mobile home/trailer fire can go from ignition to fully-engulfed in 4 minutes.
Smoke detectors are vital to living to tell about getting out of a mobile home/trailer fire!!!

We had a car fire out in the rural area, older guy, he and his wife were at our wedding because they were neighbors of the wife’s dad, he drove out to where he and his grandkids used to fish, opened the trunk and poured gasoline over his head and got back into the car.

I went to school with the grandkids, visitation at the funeral they asked if he suffered and how he looked. 30 years later and I can still see it and smell it.

 

[charlessenf]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1149654453944068

Just came across this.

Hmmm; what sort of link was that?

DuckDuckGo blocked this video to prevent Facebook from tracking you
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Examples:

"Making an impact: Safety program provides crucial grain rescue tools -"

"https://www.tractorbynet.com/forums/threads/how-to-save-someone-trapped-in-a-grain-bin.635771/"

One should examine any link they intend to share.

Many encode lots of details about the sender and enable collection of details along the chain of sharing.

In my experience the inclusion of a "/?" indicates the beginning of the tracking string and deleting those characters and all that follow will suffice to 'clean it.'

 

[charlessenf]

Sad because so often I find smoke alarms disabled… as a property manager I care more about your family than the parents or so it seems.

". . . he drank allot . . . because of what he saw for 35 years."

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this") is a logical fallacy that incorrectly assumes a causal relationship between two events simply because one happened after the other, confusing temporal sequence with causation.​

Unlike 'the military draft,' policemen are self-selected - e.g. an all volunteer force. It is always worth asking "Why did you want to become a ______________?"

Grunt, Combat Infantryman, Prison Guard, ICE Road Trucker, Thoracic surgeon, . . .

As, I suspect, the responses will illuminate aspects of the personality more likely attributable to causality than the profession selected.

 

[ReRide]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1149654453944068

Just came across this.

I was one of the lucky ones, I survived a grain silo incident. I wasn't sucked in by grain flow, but it almost got me anyway. I was in college and helped re-roof a seal store silo, kind of like a harvestor silo but made of galvanized steel. We got the roof on but it was supposed to be caulked from the inside. I agreed to come back and do that. So one day, by myself and no one knew I was coming, I climbed up to the silo, which was full of corn, and entered the silo, standing on the corn, and proceeded to caulk the roof. I started feeling funny and knew there was some kind of problem so I exited the silo and immediately felt better, I was probably running out of oxygen. It didn't feel like you feel when you hold your breath, I was probably just seconds from blacking out and I would have died but fortunately I was able to get out of the silo. Well, like a dummy I held my breath making several trips back in the silo to finish caulking the roof. But it was very obvious to me that a person should never enter a grain bin or silo without someone knowing what you are doing, and I never ever did that again.

 

[Pinecrest]

One of the most horrific stories I've heard is a guy getting stuck in a mud flat during low tide (I think it was Alaska). The rescuers tried to extricate him as the tide came in, to no avail. They have the mud flats posted, warning of the danger, but apparently it still happens somewhat regularly. As a rescuer, that would mess with my head for the rest of my life, holding on to a man as he drowns, with no way to help.

My granddad in Scotland was in the Merchant Marine during WW2. The Germans had torpedoed a munitions ship in the Clyde River and he sailed out to rescue the drowning men. Because of the exploding munitions, they weren't allowed to get close enough to rescue many of the men. He had to listen to men screaming and calling for their mothers as they struggled in the water. It stayed with him the rest of his life. He'd wake up yelling and thrashing from his sleep as he relived it each night.

Mud Flats .....use a couple of Life Jackets ....a Rising Tide will Raise all ships.....

 

[charlessenf]

Well . . . making several trips back in the silo to finish caulking the roof . . . it was very obvious to me . . . and I never ever did that again.

"Obvious" after how many trips into the silo?

 

[ultrarunner]

". . . he drank allot . . . because of what he saw for 35 years."

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin for "after this, therefore because of this") is a logical fallacy that incorrectly assumes a causal relationship between two events simply because one happened after the other, confusing temporal sequence with causation.​

Unlike 'the military draft,' policemen are self-selected - e.g. an all volunteer force. It is always worth asking "Why did you want to become a ______________?"

Grunt, Combat Infantryman, Prison Guard, ICE Road Trucker, Thoracic surgeon, . . .

As, I suspect, the responses will illuminate aspects of the personality more likely attributable to causality than the profession selected.

Or it could be he became a drunk from life experience on the job… self selected or not.

 

[Sprinkler Fitter]

Look what these police and firefighters had to deal with overnight.

This kind of fire should not happen in this day and age, no details if there were fire sprinklers, but I’m guessing there wasn’t.

Too many people think it’s not gonna happen to them and if a person does speak up, you’re kind of shut down as not having fun or something like that

 

[gsganzer]

Reminds me of "The Station" nightclub fire in Rhode Island in 2003. 100 killed and 220 injured when the styrofoam sound insulating panels caught fire.

 

[Sprinkler Fitter]

Reminds me of "The Station" nightclub fire in Rhode Island in 2003. 100 killed and 220 injured when the styrofoam sound insulating panels caught fire.

Back then shortly after that fire the same type of fire happened at a nightclub in the twin cities but fire sprinklers put it out but the news does not care about that.

 

[gsganzer]

The one thing people don't realize, is that during an emergency like that, it's absolute chaos with no orderliness. It's every person for themselves. Look at all the incidents were people get trampled to death during similar events.

I was at a chemical plant once when they had an air separation unit explode right next to our job trailers, during shift change. Someone came running into the trailers yelling "get the eff out!". There was no woman and children first courtesy. It was every guy trying to get out the door simultaneously.

Same with footage of airline accidents, people are climbing over seat backs and grabbing stuff out of the overheads, instead of exiting in an orderly fashion.

 

[thankyouTBN]

One of the most horrific stories I've heard is a guy getting stuck in a mud flat during low tide (I think it was Alaska). The rescuers tried to extricate him as the tide came in, to no avail. They have the mud flats posted, warning of the danger, but apparently it still happens somewhat regularly. As a rescuer, that would mess with my head for the rest of my life, holding on to a man as he drowns, with no way to help.

My granddad in Scotland was in the Merchant Marine during WW2. The Germans had torpedoed a munitions ship in the Clyde River and he sailed out to rescue the drowning men. Because of the exploding munitions, they weren't allowed to get close enough to rescue many of the men. He had to listen to men screaming and calling for their mothers as they struggled in the water. It stayed with him the rest of his life. He'd wake up yelling and thrashing from his sleep as he relived it each night.

That happened in a small village near me. Guys were working in a trench in the middle of the street in the middle of the village. They weren’t using shoring and the trench collapsed, I don’t remember the sequence of events but a water main broke, the fire department guys were pulling the guy as hard as they could as he drowned (after numerous attempts with other techniques to get him loose , might’ve been a backhoe involved. They were trying everything in a desperate effort to get him out.

One of the most horrific stories I've heard is a guy getting stuck in a mud flat during low tide (I think it was Alaska). The rescuers tried to extricate him as the tide came in, to no avail. They have the mud flats posted, warning of the danger, but apparently it still happens somewhat regularly. As a rescuer, that would mess with my head for the rest of my life, holding on to a man as he drowns, with no way to help.

My granddad in Scotland was in the Merchant Marine during WW2. The Germans had torpedoed a munitions ship in the Clyde River and he sailed out to rescue the drowning men. Because of the exploding munitions, they weren't allowed to get close enough to rescue many of the men. He had to listen to men screaming and calling for their mothers as they struggled in the water. It stayed with him the rest of his life. He'd wake up yelling and thrashing from his sleep as he relived it each night.

 

[tomkatohio]

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1149654453944068

Just came across this.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1149654453944068

Just came across this.

This is definitely a lifesaver but it's dependent on preparation/training, equipment and personnel availability and takes precious time to enact. What immediate options are there to help a person in a grain silo incident if there is only one or two others around?