Yesterday, fire companies in Pennsylvania responded to a call that a child was stuck in a grain silo — the type of situation that keeps farm parents up at night.
Just before 6 p.m., the New Franklin Volunteer Fire Department and the Fayetteville Volunteer Fire Department arrived at a farm in Guilford Township.
There, first responders discovered a 10-year-old boy stuck in the auger inside of the silo. Responders immediately called in an air medical team to the scene.
Workers were able to free the injured person, cut the auger framework, and apply a tourniquet to the victim. The boom arm extended 15 to 20 feet above the ground on the silo. According to reports, crews made an exit path from the silo onto the New Franklin Truck 17.
The patient was flown to an area trauma center.
A Facebook post by Lyle Ocker indicates that the child did not sustain any life-threatening injuries.
Earlier this month, another boy was rescued from a grain bin in Dover Township. First responders we called to the incident on Oct. 15, 2023. According to the fire department’s Facebook post, the child was found conscious and breathing in a grain bin cart, buried to his head in corn. In this case, the child was freed in just over 30 minutes and transferred to EMS for evaluation.
Interestingly, a Grain Rescue Class was held an hour after the extraction. According to the Fire Department, they are one of few departments in York County and the South Central Regional in Pennsylvania to have a “Great Wall of Rescue” kit, used to improve safe, grain bin rescue.
Grain bin entrapments are one of the most significant safety hazards for farmers who work in and around them. It only takes twenty seconds for a grown man to become entrapped in a grain bin, with suffocation and engulfing being among some of the top hazards.
According to the latest U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2017 Census of Agriculture, family farms make up 96 percent of all U.S. farms. With more than half of the youth who live on farms working in some capacity, children are not immune to freak accidents on the farm.
In fact, about every three days, a child dies in an agriculture-related incident, and each day, at least 33 children are injured.
»Related: Trapped in machinery, Nebraska farmer amputates his own leg
