A tragic warning: COLLAPSE EMPHASIZES THE DANGERS OF AGING ELEVATORS [The Hutchinson News, Kan.]

July 17--For a small town on the decline, the grain elevator is often the last surviving business.

Like mammoth skyscrapers across the plains, these structures have lasted decade upon decade, the center of an economy surrounded by fields of grain. The concrete forms, many built in the 1950s and early 1960s, have withstood tornados, hail and wind -- and, it seems, time.

Nevertheless, after the Agco grain elevator collapsed in Russell on June 24 during wheat harvest, claiming the lives of two workers, elevator officials say there is a heightened awareness of the aging bins that hold millions of bushels of grain.

The bodies of Max Greve, 21, Hays, and Sean Banks, 19, Russell, were found three hours after thousands of bushels of wheat and tons of concrete and reinforcement steel came crashing down.

Most in the industry say that while Kansas elevators are getting older, they do not foresee a domino effect of collapsed bins of grain.

But like anything else, a grain elevator needs care, said Gary Friesen, general manager for Scott Cooperative.

Friesen had one of his elevators, built in the early 1960s, fixed structurally earlier this year.

"I think, in light of Russell, there are a lot of people who realize the age of these facilities. It has become apparent to me that we need to look at the useful life of these facilities and what safety issues we need to develop in those facilities."

Billion-dollar industry

Wooden grain elevators began springing up across Kansas in the 1860s, according to the Kansas State Historical Society. It was at the turn of the century when the preferred method of construction, slip form, was invented.

Slip form is the method for building large reinforced towers from concrete. Slip form refers to the moving form the concrete is poured into, which moves along the project as the previously poured concrete hardens behind it.

Today, nearly 900 elevators dot the Kansas landscape, with many being the recognizable white-painted concrete slip-form elevators, said Tom Tunnell, executive director of the Kansas Grain and Feed Association, an organization that represents 99 percent of the state's commercial grain storage licensures.

These bins store the state's staple crop of wheat, as well as corn, milo and soybeans, according to the Kansas Department of Agriculture.

Most of the state's elevators, however, are more than 50 years old -- built when the government needed better grain storage in the 1950s, Tunnell said.

The Hutchinson-based company Chalmers and Borton, today known as Borton LC, built about 80 percent of Kansas elevators, said Jim Wilcoxin, the company's former CEO. Wilcoxin has worked in the grain industry more than 50 years, largely at Borton, where he started in the engineering department in 1947.

Companies like Borton designed elevators to weather storms, said Scott Anderson, vice president of risk management for Hutchinson-based KFSA (Kansas Farmers Service Association), a company that provides insurance and risk management services to agribusiness, which includes grain elevators and feedlots.

Take the Greensburg tornado in 2007, for instance, he said. One of the few structures standing after the storm was the cooperative.

Still, said Borton LC engineer Bill Socha, while some elevators are in good shape, others are in need of repair.

"Every once in a while, one splits open," Socha said. "I have videos and pictures of elevators that get split open, where nobody gets hurt and they fix them and everyone goes back to business.

"The more they are used, the quicker they wear out. If they just sat there with grain, they'd last forever, but obviously you don't make money doing that."

Yet, how long an elevator lasts can be determined only on a case-by-case basis, Sosha said. Moreover, there is not a government entity, not even the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration, that routinely checks an elevator's structure and inner workings.

Signs

Most elevator operators watch for changes, which could be cracks or separation at the fillets where the walls join, Wilcoxin said. Wall failures also are discovered when broken shards of concrete appear in the grain as the silo is unloaded or as grain starts to drain into an adjacent empty silo.

Seeing pieces of concrete shard caused Scott Co-op's Friesen and his employees to realize something needed to be done at the cooperative's Marienthal elevator, located in the unincorporated Wichita County town.

"We saw the concrete stressed, concrete coming out of the bin," Friesen said. "We stopped our operations."

Friesen said an elevator company lined the bins with gunite, a concrete mixture, which puts the bins in the same condition or better condition than when they originated.

His cooperative will continue to monitor the other half-dozen facilities scattered across Scott and Wichita counties to see if those bins need strengthened, as well.

After the Russell collapse, the realization of what can happen came to the forefront for those in the industry, Socha said.

"These things aren't indestructible," Socha said. "They wear out, they take maintenance and upkeep, just like a home."

Anderson said he only knows of a few of KFSA's member elevators that have had structural breakout issues in the past. But no lives were lost.

Heightened awareness

Socha's phone has been ringing constantly in his office in Hutchinson in the wake of the Russell incident.

Last week, he made a trip to a local elevator to check for deficiencies. He's also booking speaking engagements to talk about what structural problems employees should notice -- whether it is a crack in the concrete or something else.

"It's raised awareness," he said. "I think the fact that lives were lost, I'd really say it has heightened everyone's awareness of the possibility with these things."

Socha said he is on the agenda for a Sept. 1 seminar through Kansas State University to talk about structural issues. He's also working with associations like KFSA, which will have its own series of educational meetings at the end of the summer.

If elevator groups take care of the facilities, there should be few incidents in the next couple of decades, he said, noting it is a matter of maintenance.

What to look for isn't necessarily black and white, he said.

"There's some gray," he said.

Kansas Grain and Feed's Tunnell said the topic of an upcoming board meeting in August is to discuss whether his association should have someone on staff inspect elevators for members.

While more education is always needed, having a governmental entity look after an elevator's condition could be cumbersome, Anderson said. The managers and employees are the ones who know the facilities inside and out, such as whether a crack in the concrete is growing or if there is stress to the bins.

He said a general manager had called recently to say he had told all his employees to take a good look at the facilities.

With a lot of money wrapped into their facilities, co-op manager Friesen said the goal always is to run good facilities and have well-maintained equipment.

"I think we all had that sick feeling when (the collapse) occurred," he said. "We need to pay a lot of attention to our structures. I would tell you I feel comfortable that we have good facilities, but it warrants we take a continuous look at those facilities."

Still unclear

Investigators won't know what happened at Russell for awhile. OSHA officials are gathering information and working on the case, said Judy Freeman, the administration's area director.

She reported an initial check of records turned up no complaints or previous accidents.

Freeman said Thursday investigators must file a report within six months of the accident.

Wilcoxin wrote his own report from what he knows of the elevator's design and the company that designed it. He said he confirmed a defunct company called Sampson constructed the original elevator in 1958, with the structure that collapsed added on by the same company in 1959.

Wilcoxin assumes an inner wall failed -- a wall that had been stressed for some time.

"Most of the thousands of slip-formed elevators in this country are soundly designed and constructed," he said. "Those which have experienced structural failure in near all cases were found to be due to improper construction rather than design inadequacies.

"The ongoing investigative process at Russell may or may not eventually determine the cause of failure of those walls," he said. "Probably no one factor alone was the cause. Indeed, there was most probably multiple contributing factors."

There is always the possibility the industry may never fully know an exact cause, said Anderson, who noted his company was the elevator's insurance provider.

"No one wants anything like this to happen to their own structures," he said.

Meanwhile, the industry is mourning the lost lives, along with the communities affected. Tunnell's association has raised nearly $35,000 for Agco to use as a scholarship fund or to support the victims' families.

There is an outpouring throughout the industry, Anderson said.

"I feel sorry for the families," Anderson said. "I feel sorry for the whole community that has to get up in the morning and look at (the elevator). In this particular case, everyone sees the open wounds, and it is a constant reminder."

Elevator deaths:

1984: 1

1985: 4

1986: 1

1987: 2

1988: 2

1989: 0

1990: 3

1991: 2

1992: 1

1993: 0

1994: 1

1995: 1

1996: 1

1997: 3

1998: 8

1999: 2

2000: 2

2001: 3

2002: 1

2003: 1

2004: 0

2005: 2

2006: 3

2007: 0

2008: 0

2009: 1

2010: 3

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