105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14503742

SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,FLOWING MATERIAL,BURIED,GRAIN BIN

Event
SUFFOCATED,WORK RULES,FLOWING MATERIAL,BURIED,GRAIN BIN
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14503742
Report ID
729700

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. #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.