By Frederick Melo
Emergency crews from across the metro spent almost nine hours Thursday trying to delicately extricate a worker trapped up past his chest in corn in a Farmington grain silo.
The man fell in while attempting to empty it shortly before 11:30 a.m. He was freed 8 1/2 hours later.
"We got him out," said Farmington Police Chief Brian Lindquist. "We dug and we dug and we dug."
Lindquist said the man, whose name was not been released to the public Thursday, appeared to be doing well throughout his ordeal, considering the circumstances. He gave his wife and rescuers a thumb's up sign as he was being lowered to safety by harness.
The worker spent the day stuck in about 10 to 12 feet of corn on the south side of the Feely grain elevator, about 50 feet from the top entrance. The corn sloped upward from where he was located.
Crews made a hole in the silo above him and lowered down materials to create a barricade around him in order to hoist him up by harness while protecting him from the shifting grain. With temperatures dropping, they also lowered a medic to check on him.
There was "quite a lot of digging, and all of it done by hands and pails," Lindquist said.
Updated: 02/04/2010 09:12:37 PM CST
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