Proper training can mean the difference between life and death. That includes training in how to rescue someone from a grain bin. Knowing this, the Mississippi Farm Bureau Federation purchased a portable grain bin to make sure local and county fire departments know what to do when they respond to a grain bin safety rescue.
“In these rescues, you’ve got all of the equipment on. Most of the time, we have the breathing apparatus on, as well. It’s very difficult because you’ve got the grain going inside of your gear, putting extra weight on it,” said Michael Lamb, Bolivar County EMA Director.
“Depending on what type of grain you’re dealing with and how it collapsed, you could still be in danger,” Bolivar County Volunteer Fire Department Training Compliance Office Christopher Smith said. “That’s why we have specialized equipment and train often. We want to be able to use it effectively, making sure it protects us and the person we’re trying to rescue.”
In the Bolivar County area alone, emergency personnel answered three calls for grain bin rescues in the last five years. These calls resulted in rescues that would not have been possible without the free training offered by MFBF.
“Over the last five plus years, Farm Bureau has purchased many of the grain bin safety rescue tubes and donated them to the local fire departments in different areas across the state,” MFBF Sr. Safety Specialist John Hubbard said. “We’re fortunate that Mississippi is now more prepared. In the past, if we had a grain bin incident, we were recovering a body. Now, we’re seeing folks walk out of them.”
Hubbard and Benton Moseley, MFBF’s safety experts, travel Mississippi and the southeast United States with the grain bin safety simulator, training farmers and first responders. Whether participants have taken part in the trainings once or more, it has proven to save lives.
“You know the old saying, ‘if you don’t use it, you lose it.’ We work by that saying. Fire departments and emergency personnel see turnovers, so those departments always want us to come back and give their personnel the training again,” Hubbard said.
For training officers, like Smith who recently attended his fifth grain bin rescue class, it’s situations you don’t respond to frequently that are the deadliest for first responders if they are not properly trained.
“The training provided here is important to us because grain bin rescues is not a call we do not respond to a lot,” Smith said. “Those are the calls that become dangerous, making it critical that we know how to operate the equipment and facilitate the rescue.”
To schedule a grain bin safety training for your area, contact the MFBF Safety Department at 601-977- 4242 or athompson@msfb.org.