Grain Bin Safety Rescue

- All right, hi I'm Mike and this is Steve we're here with Penn State Ag safety and health.

And today we're gonna talk a little bit about the hazards of flowing grain.

We've been working on a project here, dealing with grain beans safe entry and getting people familiar with and to understand the hazards of flowing grain and how they can be effected by it and how we can help them be a little bit safer in their day to day grain moving operations.

So a 10 inch auger relatively standard for newer grain bins can move about 85 cubic feet of grain in one minute.

So that's a bunch of numbers.

What does that mean in terms of people?

Well, a person here about mine or Steve's size is about 4.7 cubic feet.

So that's just a matter of seconds before someone can become entrapped or even engulf, which means the grain is above the level of their head or their airway.

And they are not able to get themselves out of it.

So how fast might that be happening anywhere from zero to 25 seconds you get a very small window of time.

Once the grain starts moving this is your reaction time as a person and you get that and you say oh no I'm moving and about that time you become stuck in that level where you become stuck is just about above the knee.

So once the grain reaches the level above your knee there's too much friction and pressure, depending on the size of your bin.

And you were unable to self extricate.

So Steve can you pull a 165 pound person out of grain?

- Oh yeah sure, Mike it should be pretty easy right.

- You know, you don't think so with all the force and friction pressures imparted on a grain bin, you have to realize these things are anywhere from 20 to 50 feet wide.

So think about being underneath the swimming pool 12 feet and all that water pressure down on you.

It's kinda the same thing in a grain bin.

You have this immense amount of mass squeezing on your body.

So for 165 pound person just in trapped up to the level of their knees, it'll take about 170 pounds to extricate them, move that up to their waist.

And it'll be about twice their body weight before you'll be able to get them free.

- Yep, it takes a lot of pressure and a lot of force.

So we wanna make sure that if someone is entrapped that we'd do it correctly.

And we're gonna talk about some safe ways that we can get into the bin and hopefully prevent this from occurring certainly.

All right, so we're gonna look at three other things that we can find in grain bin.

We mentioned a grain bridging, this is what we're showing here.

This is where a crust develops on top of the grain surface below that crosses a void space.

So if someone comes up to the top of the bin and looks inside they may see a hard surface of grain.

And what they don't realize is that there was a void space underneath.

And if that person climbs down onto the top of the grain, it's very likely that that person could fall through.

And if the auger or any kind of unloading equipment is running at the same time that puts you in a very very dangerous situation.

The other one that we're gonna look at is grain avalanches.

And this is similar to the grain bridge in the sense that the grain has as clumping together and it's stuck to the bin wall.

So what is happening now is someone needs to get into the bin to knock that grain down so they can finish unloading the bin.

So what we have is all that force the same type of thing that Mike was talking about is now up vertically and when we start taking the grain away, there's a good chance that grain could come down all at once and cover the employee that's inside working in the bin.

All right, now we're back to the same situation where we're completely covered by grain and we may not have a good airway which may lead to some other problems.

Keep in mind that just one foot of grain over you can weigh quite a bit, you have a lot of pressure on you.

It weighs quite a bit.

So you definitely wanna make sure that we have preventative measures in place.

And we're gonna talk about those so that we all go home at the end of the day.

- So what would you do if you found someone trapped in grain?

So this is one of the things we're gonna talk about.

A safe entry procedures are very very important when it comes to dealing with grain.

And it's sort of a newer safety initiative push throughout the industry.

Since there have been so many incidents involving children and employees being injured or killed in grain bins.

So if you found someone entrapped in a grain bin, you should do the first thing that should have been done in the first place.

And that is de-energized the equipment.

You should turn that grain fan off make sure that make sure it's locked out, tagged out and we'll explain what that means in a short while here, but we wanna make sure there is no more power going to that bin because someone's gonna have to go in and rescue that person.

Whether it be someone else on the farm who's been properly trained in grain rescue and grain extraction or a first responder team to come in and help that person.

So we're gonna wanna make sure the power is turned off and we're gonna make sure that people know what happened and the first responders are on the way.

- If so just a few seconds here we're gonna do some demonstrations to show you what kind of hazards are associated with the grain and how quickly, just how quickly something can happen at your farm.

So Now we're gonna show one of our demonstrations that we have here at Penn State.

This trailer is designed to show the hazards of flowing grain, behind us is a simulated grain bin.

So you can see the structure here that outlines the bin.

We have a person that has gotten into the bin to performed some sort of task and they didn't wear their harness.

All right, so we're gonna show what happens when grain starts to flow.

This would simulate someone accidentally turning the unloading equipment on, not knowing that someone else may be in there or either gravity flowing or what have you.

Alright, so I want you to pay attention to just how quickly this will happen.

- Now quick note real fast.

Is this doll weighs about one pound and six ounces.

So not only are we gonna show how fast this entrapment can happen, but we'll also show how much force it takes to remove somebody from the grain comparatively.

(gain moving)

- Okay, so now our doll is trapped up to her waist and Steve has a scale here.

So like we said she weighs about one pound and six ounces.

So if Steve wants to hop up there and put this scale on her and we can read the maximum value the scale reads whenever we extricate our victim from the grain.

- So Mike we have someone that's up to their waist.

So what what kind of weight to be expected to see?

- Well, so like we saw a little bit earlier.

It should be about double a person's weight due to friction.

Now this is not corn it's plastic pellets.

So we leave a little to the imagination but it's a good representation of how granular friction can affect clothing and put pressure on a body.

- So I'll pull this up, you tell me when she starts to break free and we'll take a measurement.

- Yep All right, she's starting to move.

So she was starting to move at about three pounds and two ounces.

So that's roughly double her body weight as adult.

So that just goes to show you whenever you're entrap, it will take much more strength than you have to be able to self extricate from a grain bin.

All right, so we're gonna show you one more example of a poorly executed grain bin entry or grain operations, where somebody is not using the proper protective equipment or PPE as we like to call it.

So our other doll here got into a gravity wagon and somebody didn't know they were in there and started to open up the shoe at the bottom and so we can see, and so we can see just how fast a grain can flow out from gravity.

Like we had spoken about earlier there's moving equipment and there's gravity that we have to worry about in a grain bin incident.

So now we're gonna talk to you a little bit about how we would do this.

If we wanted to be safe and show the safe grain bin entry techniques.

- All right, so now we're gonna show you the proper way of entering a bin.

And there's three things that we want you to take away from this.

And that is using the lockout tagout system properly, using a Buddy system and having a high anchor point and your grain bin that you can safely put a harness on to enter.

All right, so now we're gonna show you the lockout tagout.

I have with me a device that we can use to lock out the power.

So we have a cover that that will isolate the switches that are turned off.

We're gonna use this to securely fastened that close.

And I have a lock that we can physically put on there with a tag that Mike has that will say danger do not energize.

Okay, and we can put on here the name who's working on the equipment and what time or we've entered a bin.

All right, so we'll put that through our lock.

We'll put that lock on there and then I'll take the key and I'll keep this key with me.

Now my buddy Mike is gonna do the same thing.

He has a lock, a separate lock from mine and a separate key for mine.

He's gonna put his lock on and he's gonna take his key.

That way no one can energize that bin while we're still in there performing our maintenance.

- All right, so we just talked about lockout tagout.

Now we're gonna talk about the other two parts of the three that we want you to memorize.

There was a lockout tag out and then there's the Buddy system and the lifeline and harness system.

So I'm gonna show both right now, our entrant is inside and I am their buddy.

So I'm gonna be standing or sitting on top of the bin, looking through the manhole where they entered, providing a line of communication from them to the ground in case of an emergency and to ensure nothing goes wrong.

So I can physically see them and observe their tasks.

Now my other job with their lifeline is to mind The rope just like rock climbing.

When you have somebody belaying you and making sure you don't fall.

And the rope is taut that is my job as well to make sure they have enough slack to do what they need.

And yet still have it taut enough that if something were to happen they don't go far.

So with the lifeline system, we have some semblance of a rope break or two crossing knots and what this will do is this will lock the rope in place.

I can go and open it and I have play that I can give and take slack.

And then once I am in a position where I have the amount of slack that I need.

I'm move this and lock it and then that rope will not move.

And then I go to a pulley, imagine this the peak of the grain bin up on an anchor point.

This would be the roof and that way the rope hangs directly over the center of the bin.

The center of the bin is where most of these incidents occur because that's where the grain flow occurs.

Like you'll see in a second here.

So we have our entrant wearing a harness, very stylish harnessed along with the lifeline rope, which is attached to the pulley and then to the sidewall and then to me the observer.

So Steve, go ahead and pull the lever and we will see what happened to somebody who has done proper grain bin safe entry.

(gain moving)

Okay, so this is the worst case of a good grain bin safe entry procedure.

The brain started moving out from under them, which is not what we wanna see.

So something must have happened after the lockout tagout, whether it be a short or something gave loose, something that can be diagnosed later, but because the entrance or the entrant was on a lifeline and the observer was here to watch and make sure they didn't go anywhere.

They were to be left suspended above the grain and that's what we're looking for in a safe grain bin entry.

All right, so we're gonna show you the dangers of a void space here.

As you can see, we have our entrant into grain bin without a harness, and this black area represents a void space.

And what that means is there's no grain there, there's just air.

So this would be indicative of a bridged grain incident.

So there might be some out of condition grain here, holding up the rest of it.

And then whenever our entrant gets on, (balloon burst)

they could become entrap.

So that was a rather slow motion demonstration because in reality if this breaks gravity takes over and you fall instead of like a balloon that deflates and loses air.

But as you can see that whole void space area, now is full of grain and our entrant.

They were sucked down into it and then covered by whatever was on top of the void space.

- All right well, thank you for joining us today.

Hopefully you learn something about the hazards of flowing grain and how to be safe when you're operating around them.

I remember that these kinds of conditions are not only dangerous to you but also any kids that may be at the farm as well.

So Mike and I and all of us here at the Ag safety and health team, we wanna make sure that everyone is safe and everyone goes home at the end of the day.

And just to recap, Mike what are the three things that we wanna send them home with?

- So three things we're gonna send you home with Are lockout tagout right.

Before you do any sort of work on any electrical machinery, you wanna make sure that it's de energized, whether that be electrical or potential energy, we wanna make sure you're being safe and you're locking out and tagging out your equipment.

We wanna make sure you're using the Buddy system.

So if something happens to you if you happen to be the one going in the bin, there's someone there who can go get help.

And then we wanna make sure you're using a lifeline and a harness.

And once this research conclude Penn State will be pushing out more information on how we can start getting these grain bins fitted for anchor points in lifeline.

So as Steve said I'm Mike and he is Steve from Penn State Ag safety and health.

Thank you very much for watching and we'll see you in the next one.