By Mark Collette
The Corpus Christi Caller-Times
CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Chuy Diaz, a worker at Corpus Christi Grain Co., was stuck inside a dark grain bin buzzing with thousands of insects and sweltering like a South Texas summer day.
Corpus Christi Fire Department Capt. Kenneth Erben said a column of sorghum stretching about 70 feet up the wall of the bin threatened to swallow Diaz and the sweat-soaked firefighters.
Rescuers stepped gingerly along a path through the grain. The hot air tasted like stale beer and smelled like a bar on Sunday morning, rescuers said.
“It was pretty hairy,” Fire Capt. Scott Marsh said.
But a company safety official said there was no danger of a fatal entrapment.
Diaz only was trapped to his waist, said safety consultant Pat Ruckstuhl, who works under a contract for Corpus Christi Grain. The grain against the wall of the bin was 22 feet high and sloped at an angle that posed no danger of collapse, he said.
Either way, the April 20 episode and the death of a worker at a Taft grain facility last year are part of a nationwide increase in accidents. The trend has the federal government threatening criminal prosecution of grain operators who don’t comply with safety rules.
Federal authorities and grain safety experts attribute the increase in accidents to employer negligence, noncompliance with standards, poor safety practices and even changes in the quality of the grain that make it behave unexpectedly.
The physics of stored grain can be frightening. Bins and silos store as many as 1 million bushels. For grain sorghum, that’s about 56 million pounds. And slight disturbances of the grain can lead to cascades that act like quicksand, giving workers just seconds to escape the pull.
Slim chances for survival
Once engulfed, the chances of survival are slim. The cause of death usually is suffocation, as tremendous pressures compress the chest and prevent breathing. A researcher at North Dakota State University calculated that silo walls under just 6 feet of grain sorghum experience pressure of 132 pounds per square foot.
Yet no worker should die in a grain bin, said Steve Wettschurack, a grain safety specialist and rescue instructor at Purdue University.
He said safety advocates are pushing for a no-entry policy for all grain bins, though some operators argue that mechanical equipment alone isn’t enough to clean old or spoiled grain out of silos.
The push for fewer bin entries is more important as bins get bigger and the equipment that moves grain gets faster.
“We used to talk about grain moving like sand in an hourglass,” Wettschurack said. “Now it’s a fluid effect, like water going down the drain.”
There were at least 51 grain entrapments in the United States in 2010 - the most since Purdue started tracking them in 1978. Twenty- six were fatal, including the case in Taft.
But reports don’t come close to representing the true number of entrapments, Purdue researchers said, because there is no comprehensive reporting system, and workers and employers are reluctant to report partial entrapments where rescue was required but no public report was made.
While entrapments are concentrated in the nation’s Corn Belt, Texas workers are no less at risk. There are about 817 grain facilities in Texas subject to federal grain handling standards, according to records of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.
There are hundreds more, usually at smaller farms, that are exempt from the standards.
The Purdue researchers found that most entrapments happened at farms. However, the most recent problems in the Coastal Bend have occurred at facilities subject to the federal standards.
There are about 30 such facilities in Bee, Jim Wells, Kleberg, Live Oak, Nueces and San Patricio counties.
OSHA spokeswoman Elizabeth Todd said the agency has opened an investigation into Diaz’s entrapment at Corpus Christi Grain Co. on April 20. The agency doesn’t comment during open investigations. Diaz could not be reached for comment.
Different circumstances
But employees said during the rescue that Diaz was working alone in the elevator when a load of grain was dumped. When he didn’t return from his shift, employees searched for about an hour and found him, they said.
Safety consultant Ruckstuhl said his investigation revealed different circumstances.
Diaz got his foot stuck at the bottom of the bin in a hole through which grain falls during unloading, Ruckstuhl said. Diaz was trying to open the passage, a common feature of grain bins, so a machine could begin sweeping the grain out.
“He had no problems breathing except when the fire department got there and stirred up too much dust,” he said.
Fire officials said they put Diaz on a respirator and tried to reduce vibrations that could cause more grain to collapse.
Ruckstuhl said Diaz had another employee inside the bin with him before he got stuck and a supervisor was within 10 feet of the bin entrance.
When workers enter storage areas, OSHA regulations require employers to turn off and lock grain-moving equipment, provide all employees with a lifeline, and place an observer outside the bin whose only task is to watch the worker inside. For each instance of a worker entering a bin, employers must issue a permit certifying that these precautions have been implemented.
While workers did lock out the equipment at Corpus Christi Grain, no permit was issued to Diaz, and he didn’t have a lifeline, Ruckstuhl said. But he said that measure is required only in cases when there is a possibility of engulfment. And in this case there was not, he said.
David Michaels, the U.S. Labor Department’s assistant secretary for safety and health, mailed a letter to grain operators in February reminding them of the regulations, citing the increasing trend in deaths and injuries, and noting that the agency will consider referring incidents for criminal prosecution. Corpus Christi Grain Co. was among those on OSHA’s mailing list.
So was Taft Grain & Elevator Co., where, on Nov. 9, 2010, Arnulfo “Ernie” Medina, 51, died after he was engulfed by grain. It took more than eight hours to free his body. On May 9, OSHA announced $188,000 in fines against Taft Grain & Elevator Co., citing violations that included failure to provide safety harnesses and rescue equipment, failure to lock out equipment to prevent accidental startup, training lapses, and failure to clean up combustible dust from work surfaces.
Company officials and an attorney for the company could not be reached for comment.
Agua Dulce Grain Co., also on the mailing list, was cited in 2009 with seven violations of grain facility standards, including one related to locking out equipment to prevent accidental startup. Its manager didn’t want to comment, but OSHA records show the conditions that led to the citations later were corrected. Fines were in the hundreds of dollars.
Push for safety standards
Purdue researchers Bill Field and Steve Riedel issued a report in February calling for an industrywide consensus on engineering safety standards for grain storage structures.
They noted that several consecutive years of poor grain quality contributed to the spike in accidents, as spoiled or frozen grain can prompt more workers to enter bins to clean or loosen buildup on the sides.
The researchers also said more entrapments could end in rescues rather than fatalities if rescuers are properly trained and equipped.
New grain rescue tubes allow first responders to slide the tube materials into tight spaces and then construct the tube around the trapped worker. They weren’t commercially available until about 2007, and Wettschurack said fire departments in rural areas where the equipment is most needed often don’t know about the tubes.
Randy Paige, assistant chief of operations for the Corpus Christi Fire Department, never had heard of them. When his firefighters rescued Diaz, they had only a 20-inch manhole to get in the bin. They cut pieces of wood, inserted them into the grain bin, and constructed a barrier around Diaz.
The rescuers received commendations last week for those efforts and Paige received interview requests from national news networks.
“They were all astounded at someone being pulled out of a grain elevator alive,” he said.
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