On a mild summer day in mid-June, Doug Omer enjoys a few minutes in the shade with his family just outside Morganfield, Ky. It’s a precious moment he nearly missed during a life-threatening, nearly seven-hour ordeal back in 2022.
“We thought we were being safe, and we let our guard down for a second, and it almost cost me my life,” Omer says.
Omer and his father, Mike, started that day hauling corn. While he waited for Mike to return, Omer went to the top of the bin to look at the farm below.
“The bin was a little over half full, and we were on red alert because we had a little bit of a scum starting to form on top of the grain,” Omer explains. “We were afraid a chunk might flow down over one of the floor holes and choke everything up and so I was using a length of 1.25" pipe, 20' long, to smack the clumps when they came down.”
It wasn’t his first time doing this, and he knows it’s common in farm country.
“When I pulled in on the second load, he was sitting up top and said I’m going in the bin,” Mike recalls. “I said, OK!”
Typically, loading a semi is just an eight-minute job. Omer eased into the bin to watch for clumps while Mike turned on the auger to load. A rope was there, but, for whatever reason, Omer didn’t tie off.
“We were running for probably 20 seconds, and I hear this shh behind me,” Omer says. “I was standing about the top of my boots deep in corn but when it hit me, I dropped to the bottom of my pockets and the collapse moved me roughly 20' over the hole.”
A Sound He Will Never Forget
Luckily, Omer was next to the bin wall.
“I’m not real smart, but I knew I didn’t have enough Doug hanging out to last eight minutes, so I was beating on the wall,” he says. “As I sunk to my chest, the pressure started squeeze the life out of me. Jesus and I had a good talk, and I thought, Doug, this is how you’re going to die. In this freaking bin of corn.”
The realization gave him the strength to gather his breath for one last frenzy of banging on the bin wall.
“I heard a big bang, and I thought a bucket had come off the leg,” Mike says. “Then I heard another bang, and I knew the bucket hadn’t come off the leg because I’d already shut the leg down.”
“I got down to about my chin, and I laid my head back to give me a few extra seconds,” Omer recalls. “I still hear it in my dreams almost every night, that breaker kicked off at the top of the bin.”
All Hands On Deck
Everything stopped. Omer was trapped, buried and fighting for breath as the pressure continued to squeeze the life out of him.
“It’s 66 steps to the top of the bin, and my dad was 72 years old, but it seemed like a split second and he was up there,” Omer says. “He said, ‘I’m coming in,’ and I said, ‘If you come in here, it’ll bury me. You have to stay outside.’”
Mike called 911 and raced up the hill to grab Omer’s nephew. When the much younger Logan jumped in the bin, the grain indeed slid down covering Omer. He carefully dug the corn away and helped Omer catch his breath.
Once he wasn’t buried, Omer wanted to call his wife.
“I answered it, and it was Doug,” recounts his wife, Samantha Omer. “He said, ‘I just called to let you know that I’m drowning in the grain bin,’ and I said, ‘what?’ He told me again, and he said, ‘I just wanted to call and tell you I love you.’”
That started the clock on a six-hour race to save Omer’s life. More than 200 emergency personnel, neighbors, family and friends worked to pry him from grain’s grip and death’s door.
Emergency crews brought the only two bin rescue tubes in the county. Two bucket trucks showed up to help ferry tools, people and medical supplies from the ground to the top of the bin.
Two hours of rescue efforts went by.
“The way I was sitting, I wouldn’t fit in the tube, and they hit my right kneecap with the auger,” Omer says.
The team had to add a second set of tubes and move even more grain. Meanwhile, medical experts decided Omer needed IV’s and oxygen. By hour five, he was ready to do anything to be free.
“I wanted to cut my legs off,” Omer says. “I told them I’ll end this. I’ll just stick a saw down there and cut until something pops off. I was hurting that bad.”
At the six-hour mark, a team finally grabbed Omer’s harness and pulled.
“I went to screaming, you moved me, you moved me,” Omer says. “Instantly they hit me again, and they moved me about 6". They hit me a third time, and on the third pull I was standing up inside the tube.”
His hips, knees and ankles were dislocated from the pull’s force. They lifted him to the top of the tube, and his joints were pushed back in socket. Omer climbed on all fours to the top of the bin and was helped out of what nearly became his tomb.
“Everybody started cheering, and it took him a while to get down the steps, but he walked down each step,” smiles Samantha remembering the moment.
“We were just glad he was alive,” says an emotional Mike as the wave of relief crashed over him once again.
Omer’s family met him at the bottom of the bin, and he was ferried to a life flight helicopter standing by in the field. While in the air, the quick change in elevation sent his body into shock. The hours of pressure mimicked deep sea diving.
“I ran my hand up my headset, and it was full of blood,” Omer says. “I told the medical crew, this can’t be good.”
He had the bends or decompression sickness. The helicopter dropped elevation, flying as low as possible to Evansville, Ind. Doctors rushed Omer into the hospital. There, he was stabilized, his joints were reset, his vitals monitored, and at 11:30 p.m. that night, he walked out of the hospital and headed for home.
Take Time to Slow Down
Two years later, the gift of life, continues for Omer thanks to hundreds of unnamed hands.
“Everything just worked out so perfectly,” Samantha says. “Some folks don’t think your hometown people can be heroes, but they were our heroes on that day.”
If you ask them their advice for other farmers working around grain bins, they’ll say you can never be too careful.
“Don’t think it can’t happen to you because he was 54 years old, and he’s been around them all of his life,” Samantha says. “It was that one incident that almost got him.”
Omer admits he was just in too much of a hurry that morning on what was typically a quick and simple job. He should have stayed out of the bin or at least tied himself off with the rope.
“Just stand back and look at it before you bale in there,” Omer says. “I mean, most farmers just get wound up and are in a hurry.”
He says if his story does anything, maybe it will encourage others to take a moment to think about safety, even on small jobs. That extra few seconds could be the difference between a quick end and a long and happy life.
