An Unfortunate Accident

On Monday I had to go somewhere I had not been in a while, the hospital.  Scott was in a farming accident.  Mom called me at work at around 4pm to tell me that Scott was being taken to the hospital in an ambulance and that he had got his fingers caught in an auger but he was fine.

She made it seem like nothing too bad had happened so I was worried but not too badly. But I quickly drove to the hospital, which is only about 3 minutes from where I work. When I got there all the paramedics talked to me first and explained what his fingers looked like and what they knew so far, they freaked me out a bit because they looked so worried! Then I got to see him. His fingers were bloody, he was shivering and he looked like he was in pain! And he was in pain.

So what happened? Scott was working at our barn, waiting for the trucker to come to ship our pigs (to market..). Since he had a bit of time he decided to try and fix the auger which had broken. It had a bolt stuck in it and so the flex auger was winding itself out of the tube that protects it.

He turned off the power that runs the auger, but because the coil was under so much pressure being pulled out there was no stopping it. Scott knew that once he got the bolt out of where it shouldn’t be that it would wind back in, but he did not anticipate how fast it would happen. And that is why he found himself lying on the ground, under a grain bin with his right hand fingers stuck in a flex auger, one of these, which is used to move feed:

Scary, no? Augers are very dangerous and cause many people to lose limbs (or worse) in farming accidents. Scott was lying in the rain on the ground, and being the fast thinker that he is used his left arm to grab his cell phone out of his right pocket and started dialing neighbors phone numbers, and 911. The neighbours came, the police came, the ambulance came, the fire trucks came and even the air ambulance came (but it could not land because it was too foggy out.) They took a while to get there though so Scott was freezing because it was raining out and was pretty cold. Long story short they finally they got his fingers out.

Scott is a lucky lucky man, his fingers are fine, well except for a broken knuckle on his middle finger and he has about 16 stitches on his middle and pinky fingers. He’s taking some time off work right now, hanging out at home.

Scott, putting on a brave face in the hospital bed. He wouldn’t let me take a picture of his bloody fingers.. so no pictures of that. Sorry!

Pretty colours in the hospital room.

Scottie, the brave boy this morning, at home.

Let this be a lesson to you all, never try to fix a flex auger by yourself, and take all safety precautions!

Check out these Farm Safety Sites if you are interested:

Canada Safety Council

Farm Safety Association

Farm Safety for Kids -As children my sisters and I attended many Farm Safety days in the area, they always teach children dangerous areas around the farm yard.