Worker trapped in corn silo for 8 hours; OSHA issues fine
May 14, 2010 by Fred HosierPosted in: In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views, PPE (protective equipment), Safety training, What Would You Do?
PDF It’s a common thought among workers who choose not to use their safety gear: It’ll be OK just this one time. This story shows the consequences — this worker is very lucky to be alive today.
Mark Malecha, a manager at Feely’s Elevator in Farmington, MN, was trying to dislodge some frozen corn in a grain silo.
According to the owner of Feely’s, Malecha would normally attach fall protection gear when entering the silo. But on Feb. 4 this year, he didn’t.
Some corn shifted, and Malecha fell 30 feet. He was buried up to his chest in frozen corn.
Luckily, his one arm was free, and he used his cell phone to call for help.
The rescue was time-consuming. Workers lowered plywood into the silo to form a box around Malecha to keep corn from caving in on him.
After rescuers built the box, they removed corn from the silo one bucket at a time.
Eight hours later, a team of an estimated 145 rescue workers freed him.
Surprisingly, Malecha wasn’t injured.
OSHA issued seven citations against Feely’s for a total of $7,750 in fines. Feely’s is contesting the fines.
How do you impress upon workers that they have to wear their PPE every time? Let us know in the Comments Box below.
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May 14th, 2010 at 3:27 pm
“How do you impress upon workers that they have to wear their PPE every time?” If after ample time and resources has been spent to properly train and equip workers to do thier jobs safely and you still experiance an accident like this, then the answer is simple. You fire the unsafe workers. Hopefully, before they have caused injury or death to themselves or others.
May 18th, 2010 at 8:31 am
How do you get workers’ attention? For companies that have spent the time and money training their employees, you start fining the workers. Why should the employee get to walk away without any responsibility. Maybe workers would start using what they have been taught!
May 18th, 2010 at 9:42 am
Rather than fines, I think the company should have to pick up the rescue bill. Additionally, the employee should be reprimanded, as firing may be a little risky if the company didn’t do enough to cover itself.
May 18th, 2010 at 10:47 am
The employee must, sadly, be let go. He didn’t think of how it would affect his fellow workers, family, community, and certainly not his employer. Some people simply will not change. Fire him, period.
May 18th, 2010 at 10:58 am
Watch as the firing lead to a lawsuit for the employer being too lax on safety rules.
May 25th, 2010 at 7:40 am
This appears to be another case of lets blame the employer for the employee being slack in his responsibilities. The employer had the safety equipment, anchorage points, and regulations as far as the information in this article reads. The employee decided, yes decided, that it would be ok not to follow company policy this one time. IT WILL ONLY TAKE A MINUTE. This attitude causes more injuries and death than most of us ever hear about. Why should the company be penalized for a consious decision to break rules? I have fired employees for blatant disregard of safety policies and they have tried to sue. Guess what? If you have a good written policy, training and a consistent documentation/disciplinary policy the employee breaking the rules will not win. EMPLOYEES NEED TO BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR OWN SAFETY AS WELL AS A COMPANY MUST HAVE TRAINING AND CONSISTENT POLICIES.
May 25th, 2010 at 4:22 pm
Safety Lady, I totally agree with you. My guys just love to put the screws to the company.. it’s their union mentality. We lost someone in a confined space because he thought it would only take a minute to hold his breath and climb inside a tank that had contained gasoline… to get his cell phone that had fallen out of his pocket. The tank had been purged with hydrogen sulfide. He died quickly and because he shouldn’t have been anywhere near the tank, no one missed him for a while. He had been trained and trained… it apparently fell on deaf ears.
May 30th, 2010 at 10:24 am
Ya know we all make mistakes, and the difference between those mistakes is usually only the severity of the consequences. Working at a small factory at that time I noticed a nearby factory was being painted. One of the painters was on a ladder which was propped against a rack make from steel scaffold tubing. The ladder was aluminum. She was leaning to one side of the ladder and in passing I suggested that because the ladder might slip along the steel she should either clamp it or at least tie it to the tubing. Neither is really the correct answer of course but…
Walking back outside about 5 minutes later I saw her fall. One leg went through the ladder so the first thing to hit the concrete was her head. Very serious head injury, and I still feel bad about it to this day. A few seconds either way and I just might have been close enough to prevent the fall, or maybe I should have found rope or duct tape of something and tied it myself, but too late. I figured that she had understood my comments and would either tie it or avoid leaning sideways.
In this case I believe she was being employed on an ad hoc basis by a friends or whatever, so I imagine there may have been no insurance and worse still no training, certainly no knowledge about the meaning of “Center if Gravity”, but they all know more about it now. One statement I heard as the ambulance left began with the words “I didn’t think…” Too damned right he didn’t think.
August 25th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
Very sad to hear of the confines space death… heart breaking for the family and company im sure. It seems to happen like that. We transload Sulphur and the guys are required to use the SABA provided but they often will just leave it off because it takes to much time and is annoying! What an attitude…. They are the ones that are in a hurry to die.