Tragedy in a Grain Elevator
In July of 2010, Wyatt Whitebread, 14, and Alejandro Pacas, 19, were helping move corn onto a conveyor at a Consolidated Grain and Barge grain elevator at a facility in Mount Carroll Illinois.
Suddenly Whitebread began sinking into the corn. Pacas jumped in to save him, but he too quickly started sinking.
A third worker, Will Piper, 20, also jumped in to save them both.
Whitebread and Pacas disappeared into a sink hole. Piper was engulfed up to his neck for two hours while 300 rescuers worked frantically to remove him from the bin. They didn’t recover the bodies of Pacas and Whitebread until 10pm that night.
Mount Carroll is a blip of a town, home to 1,700 people. It’s about 30 kilometres east of the Mississippi River and Iowa border. The land is surrounded by gutted red barns, spinning windmills, horses swatting flies, and billboards with slogans like "Beef. It’s What’s For Dinner,” line the two-lane road into town.
Will Piper, the young man who survived, would later say it felt like an 80,000-pound semi-truck had parked itself on his chest. He could still breathe, but barely. The corn touched his lips. Got stuck in his ears. He panted in pain.
And the kernels kept falling…
In a corn drowning, pressure from the kernels on the rib muscles and diaphragm can become so intense they prevent any breath at all. Instead of drawing in air and releasing it by expanding the chest, everything gets compressed, with no more ability to inhale. The air already inside the lungs gets trapped, unable to get out. This is called compressional or traumatic asphyxia. The second deadly part of a corn drowning comes from suffocation. There’s an overwhelming urge to exhale but it’s impossible. A terror-filled one to two minutes follows – that’s how long it takes to lose consciousness from lack of oxygen to the brain. There’s still oxygen in the blood, the heart is pumping.
I’m Coming Down
Will remembers hearing the voice of volunteer firefighter Tom Cravatta. Tom called up to another colleague, "Throw this rope down to me. I’m going to tie myself off, and I’m going to go in.” When Tom’s boots hit the corn, the pressure created a small avalanche. He shoved pieces of plywood into the corn around Will, like thrusting pieces of fencing into hard dirt. An oxygen tank was sent down with a mask. Will remembers that seemed to calm him a bit.
Meantime more rescuers began drilling holes in the outside of the bin to drain kernels. Trucks below loaded up with corn and hauled it off to dump in a nearby pile. After two hours, the grain was down to Will’s belly button, and they were able to extract him.
Lawsuit
The three families would launch a lawsuit against the owner of the grain bin, Haasbach. The families of Pacas and Whitebread were awarded $8 million each. Will Piper was awarded $875,000. An OHSA investigation determined several violations: the owner didn’t train the young workers, provide safety harnesses, make sure machinery was turned off, or develop an emergency action plan. A separate investigation found Haasbach violated child labour laws by hiring workers under 18 to perform hazardous jobs.
Doug Downs - Communications Consultant