As 70-year-old Jay Butterfield sank deeper into quicksand-like grain, his first cries for help went unheard.
Deep inside a Butler County silo, with waves of suffocating grain cascading down on him and crushing his sides, Butterfield shouted out to a family member outside the silo but he couldn’t be heard.
It was the first frantic minutes of what would turn into a three-hour, death-defying ordeal for the life-long farmer.
Some of the tons of grain slowly enveloped him, creeping upward from his shoulders, then chin and finally his mouth before a firefighter lowered from the top of the silo reached him with a life-saving oxygen mask.
“I thought that was the end,” Butterfield told the Journal-News Friday, about 24 hours after the accident.
“(The grain) just kind of sucked me right in. And it kept sucking me in farther,” he recalled.
He was close to the floor of the silo and “luckily that stopped me from going any deeper.”
But the shifting grain around kicked up choking dust and his every movement inched more on to him.
Grain can be like quicksand in that a trapped victim’s struggling creates a suction that draws them deeper into the grain.
According to the Centers for Agricultural Safety and Health, nearly half of all grain entrapments that become engulfments lead to death by suffocation.
“The grain was on top and it was coming down while (firefighters) were working on me. They put a funnel down with cool air breathing on me. They all done a great job saving my life,” he said.
Ross Twp. Fire Chief Steve Miller said Butterfield was pulled from the silo around 7 p.m. Thursday after about three hours.
The chief said Butterfield was treated and released from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center Friday morning.
The chief said when his crews arrived on scene the grain was already up to Butterfield’s chest and rising as they secured him with a rope until they could get a Reily Twp. “grain rescue tube” around him to relieve the pressure.
On Friday, Miller said the farmer “had no traumatic events and he was released. That just tickled me to death.”
More than 50 firefighters and EMS personnel were at the rescue scene at Butterfield’s farm in the 2000 block of Timberman Road.
Miller gave high praise to all the departments that responded and especially to the Butler County Emergency Management Agency and Butler County Technical Rescue Team — a specialized team made up of area fire departments — for the successful mission.
“It was just a great job by everybody,” he said. “It worked the way it should work.”
Butterfield said, “I thought it was my last minutes.”
He calmed himself through prayer and his determination to live on for his loved ones.
“I prayed to God. I think it was God,” who saved his life, said Butterfield.
“And my wife, I didn’t want to leave her here.”
———
©2019 the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio)
Visit the Dayton Daily News (Dayton, Ohio) at www.daytondailynews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
