Cover Story: When one bale too many caused tragedy
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
When a bale slipped off a loader and fell onto the hapless operator, it left him partly paralyzed. It's the type of accident that happens all too often, says the local fire chief
By DON STONEMAN
The accident merited a terse report in a policeman's notebook and three paragraphs in the local newspaper. It left a young man's life changed forever, and a deputy fire chief shaking his head in wonderment.
The police report describes how officers responded to a report of a farm accident on the 8th Line of Mapleton Township in Wellington County on Feb. 1, at 12:40 p.m. A 32-year old farmer, Doug Webber, had been found by his wife paralyzed on his loader-tractor seat nearly two hours after a large square bale of straw fell on him.
The report said that the farmer was transported to a hospital in Kitchener. Neither the police report nor the newspaper mentioned that the farmer was moving three large square straw bales when a board in floor of the barn broke under the right front tire and the tractor tilted.
Dennis Frey, district fire chief of the Floradale Station, and his fellow firefighters fill in some of the blanks. He didn't attend at the Webber barn, but received reports about it. "His safety rack on the loader was only built for two bales," but was carrying three, he says.
John Gingrich, one of Frey's firefighters, was first on the scene. Gingrich saw Webber slumped over to the right on the tractor seat. The wheel only dropped a few inches, Gingrich says, but the jolt distracted Webber so that he didn't see that the top bale had been jarred loose and was rolling towards him. Because there was straw caught on the "elbows" of the loader lift arms, Gingrich surmises that the bale hit there on the way down before it bounced off the roll bar, rolling forward onto the hapless operator and then onto the floor.
Frey has examined the circumstances of the accident exhaustively. "We don't know what threw the tractor out of gear," he says. "Perhaps his knee banged the gearshift into neutral."
When Gingrich arrived, "Doug was conscious and talking to him."
The Webbers had just returned from a holiday in the south four days before. The victim made arrangements while waiting for the ambulance's arrival. "He was telling (his wife) 'there's two cows at the end of the row that are fresh and don't put that milk into the cooler,'" Frey says.
Frey is a garage operator and not a farmer. Nevertheless, since the accident, he has been questioning how farmers move large square hay and straw bales. Already, since that accident, he has heard of an incident in the area where a bale fell from the top of a stack of three that was being moved. And he's heard of near misses in the past, including one where the farmer escaped because he leapt from the tractor seat.
He's learned that farmers usually don't carry three bales at once when they are feeding and bedding livestock, but "it's quite common" to move three bales when they are storing bales or moving them for transport to another farm. Yet scant few loaders have a guard high enough to hold three bales in place, Frey says.
Frey wants the word out. "What can we do, other than educate, educate, educate?"
The predominant attitude seems to be: "'It doesn't matter. It wasn't me,' so they keep on doing it."
Time pressure and the desire to be "efficient," are part of it. Farmers move these bales three at a time constantly, says Gingrich, himself a farmer as well as a volunteer fireman, who lives about two miles away from Webber. "It's a lot quicker and a lot more efficient to take one stack at a time. It's also how they are stored. If bales are put up three high "you can get another layer on the top."
Carrying three at a time isn't a danger to the operator if they are carried low. "It's an educated risk, you might call it," he says.
Gingrich expects to be moving three bales at a time when the busy haying season arrives, but plans to modify his bale forks beforehand. One area farmer, Duane Brubacher, who buys and sells hay and straw, designed and built his own hay fork to carry three bales at a time safely. Gingrich says Brubacher's loader is too heavy and cumbersome to use all of the time, especially in barns. Frey says there should be a way to add a temporary extension to the existing safety racks on loaders.
According to Dean Anderson, chief executive officer with the Farm Safety Association, the type of accident that befell Doug Webber happens all the time. Sometimes people other than an operator get hurt. A loader will push a bale over the top of a pile onto another worker "taking a water break" in the shade, he says by way of example.
In Webber's case, there were probably three preventative measures which could have been taken, Anderson says. The barn floor might have been reinforced with planks. The loader might have had a guard on it. Or the tractor might have had a cab.
There is scant information about the dangers of large square bales and loaders on the Farm Safety Association's website. One fact sheet on using balers on the website says: "The newer large square balers pose an even greater risk (than a small baler) because of the larger tractors needed for operation and the weight of the bales produced." Another fact sheet on tractors cautions that a loader in the raised position can increase the possibility of overturns.
Doug Webber's father, Leonard, says that the young man has some use of his arms now, but not of his fingers, and the prognosis is not optimistic.
His legs remain paralyzed.
A few weeks after the accident he was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital in Hamilton. Leonard and Doug's mother have moved back to the farm to help with the chores and small children, while Doug's wife Carol spends time with him in the hospital. There are neighbours to help with the milking of 50 cows, at least until the busy planting season arrives.
"We need the prayers of the people," Leonard Webber told Better Farming. "There will be a way made, I guess."
"They are just loaded with massive decisions that they will have to make now," says Frey. BF