OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14503742
JOHNSON ELEVATORS, INC.
SMOLAN, KS·
Event description
Employee killed when suffocated in grain bin, another unhurt
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 and a coworker were inside a concrete bin standing on the grain remo ving wheat with a Vac-u-ator, a diesel-powered vacuum machine. Employee #1 dropp ed the flexible duct and nozzle into the wheat, causing the grain to flow and ca rry Employee #1 with the grain along the bin's flat bottom. The wheat that had s ubsided along the bin's northwest quadrant then started to move, burying Employe e #1 and killing him. The coworker, although more than half buried, managed to e xtract himself by grabbing the flexible duct and pulling himself up to the ladde r rungs that were along the bin's interior wall. He sustained no injuries.
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 67 M
- Nature of injury
- 1
- Part of body
- 4
- Event type
- 8
- Source
- 14
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 11
- Environmental factor
- 18
- Task assigned
- 1
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.