Twenty-six people died in that year, the worst year in decades.Īccording to the Center for Public Integrity: Heavy rains the prior year made for very moist, clumpy grain in storage. One teen survived.Ģ010 was a year for the record books. That was the case in 2010 when a 20 year old and two teens were entrapped in an Indiana silo. Sometimes, they send workers in to walk down the grain – often teens, immigrants or some other temporary workers who may not be aware of the dangers. News reports say that he fell in – until OSHA investigations, we may not know the particulars around why he entered the bin alone and had no protection, such as harnesses. This summer is starting as many others, with a lone worker trapped and suffocated in a grain silo – his would be rescuers talk about futile attempts to save him. It’s a highly dangerous practice that can result in sudden entrapment similar to being sucked in by quicksand. It refers to the practice of workers going into grain silos and bins with shovels and picks to break up clogs in the grain so that it can flow smoothly. If you are a company or a farmer that has an interest in his machine.It’s called “walking down the grain,” it’s illegal and it results in suffocation deaths on farms with frightening regularity. His goal is for a grain bin company to license the patent from him and have that company be within the United States. To protect his invention, Mason has filed for a patent that he now owns. Now, with Mason’s invention, workers can stay outside of a silo or grain bin and let the machine do all the work instead. What this does is brings all the grain down evenly and levels it.”Ĭorn, in this way, can act like quicksand and can have you sinking within minutes, leading to possible asphyxiation and death. “Some farmers go in there and … try shoveling down to the center then they can collapse on them and suffocate them. “The main purpose of this is for when you’re unloading the grain bin from a bigger bin, you get down to the bottom of the bin, you have still 15 to 20 foot side walls in bins,” explained Mason. The model is designed to help keep farmers safe while unloading grain and to help with the funnel effect by breaking up the top moldy layers. The grain machine Mason has invented, called the Grain Gyre, can be used for multiple types of feed. Stacy Gahler, Mason’s mom, said she wasn’t sure at first when he took an interest in such an idea, but after his agriculture teacher reached out with support for his innovations, she got behind Mason and supported him on his designs. After watching “Silo,” a movie inspired by true events where a teenage boy becomes the victim of a grain entrapment accident, a Pierz high schooler has invented a machine that’s the first of its kind and is designed to save farmers from entrapment or suffocation inside their grain bins.Īt the age of 14, after sitting through an agriculture class and learning that accidents associated with grain bins could cause life-threatening injuries, Mason Gahler set out to invent a state-of-the-art machine that could save countless lives.Īlthough most boys at 14 were into video games and other activities, Mason had a gift for putting complex invention ideas together.
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