Two farmers shrink-wrapped in grain bags
Wes Woods, Saskatchewan marketing rep for SeCan, called with a warning about unloading those large grain storage bags with a grain vac. He knows of two farmers on the Prairies who were “shrink wrapped” when they were working inside the bag with the nozzle end of the grain vac. The empty bag closed around the hose at the open end and the vac quickly sucked all the air out of the cavity. Quick thinking in both cases saved the men from suffocation. One man gnawed a breathing hole in the bag with his teeth. That’s pretty heavy plastic, so it took a lot of chewing. The other guy managed to extract a jackknife from his pocket and slice a small breathing hole.
Grain vacs are not the recommended extraction tool. The baggers have their own extractor. They cost as much as a grain vac, so if you’ve already got the vac, one can understand the temptation to use your vac for the job. But for goodness sake, be careful. “New vacs are much more powerful than old ones on the market,” Woods notes.
He also warns growers who have stored out-of-condition grain in the bags to check them regularly for spoilage. Just like a silage bale in plastic, wet grain will ferment in the oxygen-free environment. “Are baggers cost efficient in the long run?” Woods asks. “With bags full of varying quality product — tough, hot — this winter, we are all about to learn a lot more about the systems.”
Do you have personal close calls with bags? Do have tips about making these bags work better? Please email me and I'll share your comments with Grainews readers.
0 TrackBacks
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Two farmers shrink-wrapped in grain bags.
TrackBack URL for this entry: http://bloggn.grainews.ca/cgi-bin/mt/mt-t.cgi/356
Over the last 2 months I have had the story of grain vacs sucking up grain bags and trapping farmers told to me repeatedly at trade shows and on the phone. I have yet to varify these stories personally as I have yet to talk to anyone that actually knows a person that was trapped. I have many customers that use a grain vac to empty or cleanup from grain bags. I ask anyone that knows for fact and who was involved please contact me, if this story is true it is important for us in the grain vac and grain bag industry to take all precautions we can to insure it does not happen again. If the story is rumour passed from one person to the other it must be exposed and stopped.
Thank you
Dennis Muirhead
Grain Vac Services
Craik, SK.
1 888 524 2228