Illinois farmer Tom Ritter was more than a farmer. At 73 years old, he was a man who still lived to serve.
“Dad was someone who just absolutely loved agriculture,” says Cory Ritter. “I like to tell people he taught us how not to say ‘no.’ So whenever there was something that needed to be done, whether that was serve on a local Farm Bureau or a local board of some sort, if Dad was asked a lot, he said ‘yes’ a lot.”
Just weeks away from his 51st harvest, Tom was doing something he had done countless times before on the farm. He was cleaning out a grain bin on his farm before harvest. But this time, things suddenly went wrong.
“It happened on Aug. 20, and he was wrapping up our last empty in our last bin of corn and using a vac system,” Cory says. “There was something that went wrong with the vac or something, and he knew better than to crawl in the bin but just thought he would try to fix it from the outside. He got frustrated, like we all do on the farm, he popped in the bin real quick and some corn slid down and killed him.”
In an instant, Tom was gone. And a rescue mission by surrounding fire departments, turned into a recovery mission for those involved.
“His love for community was really shown when all the farmers started showing up. Fire departments, I think there was eight fire departments, that showed up. There were over a hundred people on-site that day,” Cory says.
With the loss of his dad just weeks before, and their family still coping with such a tragic loss, Cory says he’s wiling to share his dad’s story in hopes his tragedy will help prevent accidents on other farms.
“If something good can come out of this tragedy, it’s other people thinking twice before doing something by themselves that’s slightly unsafe,” he says. “We just want to talk to make people think twice. If we can save somebody else, that’s a win and something that I’m going to be comforted in.”
Grain bin entrapments are a continued risk of farming. Purdue University compiles data annually, and the latest report showed 51 grain bin entrapments, and 41.2% of those resulted in a death. That compares to the five-year average of 49.7%.
However, that number is more than likely too low. As the report indicated, over two-thirds of current U.S. grain storage capacity is on farms, which are exempt from OSHA injury reporting requirements, meaning it is highly likely the summary does not encompass all grain-related entrapments.