farm rescue/ firemans rant

   / farm rescue/ firemans rant #1  

firemanpat2910

Platinum Member
Joined
Feb 10, 2006
Messages
914
Location
Havana Fla
Tractor
Ford 2910II
Had an emergency page out today. Man stuck in piece of farm equipment. I am the chief of the VFD. I was at my day job, about 10- 15 miles away. But I responded "non emergency" and monitored the radio on my there. Upon arrival victim was still pinned but progress was being made. I do not know the name of the implement I will try and google it later and see if I can post a pic of exact model. But it was a "sodder"
cuts the square pieces and puts them on a pallet? had a conveyor with a steel mesh belt that must move the cut pieces up to the pallet? at least that's how it looked. Well ant way supposedly there are two workers on the machine one drives the tractor, and the other works the pallets, what ever that means. Well today the second worker got his foot caught in the steel mesh belt and it pulled him knee deep ito the machine before diver could stop it. machine had large maybe 4: diam serrated type rollers with maybe a 1.5" cold roll steel shaft center that went through bearings on outter frame of machine. Leg was trapped between 4 such rollers, two steel mesh belts and a couple, maybe 3, 2"square steel braces. We used the spreaders from our rescue tools to start bending the rollers apart, then we would crib with 4x4 wood wedges, then move deeper down, and get another bite. It was working but slow. just as I arrived a local heavy repair truck pulled in with a cutting torch, once the 1.5 cold roll shafts were cut the spread was much easier and we got patient out fairly quickly to the waiting ambulance. During our clean up/ putting tools away time I noticed a socket set, and non Fire dept crowbars and such. The other workers had tried to dismantle the machine before calling us, so as to not damage the machine, when we get back to station the sod farm owner comes pulling up in his car wanting to know why we damaged his machine, and to complain that his 20,000 dollar machine was not gonna be able to make him any money today. I said we did the least damage we could, he said we should have dismantled it piece by piece not cut with torch. at the end he did finally ask how bad his worker was hurt, but only after complaining again about no work today.
 
   / farm rescue/ firemans rant
  • Thread Starter
#3  
500x300_product_images-90-rollmax2400productmain-250x250.jpgsod_cutter.jpg some thing like this but not exactly
 
   / farm rescue/ firemans rant #4  
Did I mention I don't even deal with counter people that don't know what they're doing?
Oh, wait that's a different rant.
That business owner had better hope he has documentation that those labors were trained in the correct use of the machine.
 
   / farm rescue/ firemans rant #5  
When someone values a machine over a human being something is very, very wrong.
 
   / farm rescue/ firemans rant #6  
I feel sorry for the accident victim. His life will be changed forever. Maybe the owner will forget about his machine when he has a two million dollar law suit filed agains him.

I have seen that Emergency workers are often a little too destructive however. Unnecessarily so. Maybe not applicable to situations like this.

A friend of mine who repairs equipment was repairing a combine a few months back. A little kid injured himself quite badly in the combine head. The owner was asking what he should do, because now that the machine was repaired, he had beans to harvest! On advice, he did take the kid to the hospital.

Different belief systems I guess!
 
   / farm rescue/ firemans rant #7  
That's just unbelievable.

Not as much damage involved (not for the guy getting his panties bunched up anyway) but sort of along the same line of thought...

A couple years ago I was talking to a buddy who is is on the FD, he was telling me about a wreck where a tractor trailer had went into the median and down between the two interstate bridges, landing in a creek. There was a hundred gallons or so of diesel leaking everywhere.

Down the road a ways the FD needed to enter a farm gate (locked) to gain access to the creek to try to contain the fuel. It was like 2AM and no one in sight with a key so they cut the chain. A little later the landowner came raising all kinds of h*ll about the cut chain. My buddy just laughed and told him they could have cut the lock or even the gate in half, if they'd wanted to, but instead cut the chain because it would be cheaper to replace. He still wasn't happy.

People these days... :rolleyes:
 
   / farm rescue/ firemans rant #8  
People like that make me wonder.
 
   / farm rescue/ firemans rant
  • Thread Starter
#10  
no the machine was fully behind the tractor not off to the side. I have not found a picture of it. We are clearly not welcome back on the farm to get any pictures, I will say karma is wonderful..... Cant go into details but smile and be sure karma is working
 

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