Excavator crushed under silo

[gggraham]

Caution graphic video. Poor guy in Chile was killed digging around this silo.
http://www.totallycrap.com/videos/videos_concrete_silo_falls_over_onto_a_digger/

 

[AmerIndependent]

That's terrible

Man, that arm just guided his cab right into the line of fire. Really sad.

 

[CM1995]

This unfortunate story has already been posted Here.

 

[gggraham]

Did not notice it I never wander over to the demolition forums..sorry.

 

[lgammon]

really sad, but this reminded me of a show from england i think. there was this old guy that took down old silos and smoke stacks. BY HAND!! and he did it safely. he would take a slege hammer and knock a hole 2 feet high and about 6-8 inches wide then cut a block of wood alittle bigger and drive it in the hole move over a bit and do the same till he made his way a third of away around then pile up a big pile of brush palets and set it on fire. when it burned the blocks up the silo would just fall over and he was way out of the way......gotta love ole krafty guys

 

[ditchdiggerjcf]

wow, I guess that old hitachi is headed to the bone pile. What a shame.

 

[LDK]

That would be Fred Dibbnah (spelling?)that you saw on TV I am sure. He was into steam engines too, a "real" character. He died about 3 or 4 years ago I think.

 

[dayexco]

you could see that train wreck coming from the first frame...can't believe nobody there didn't go..."oh hey, somebody might die here"

 

[watglen]

That sucks!

I took a silo down a couple years ago. It was a stave silo, all the neighbours and family came to watch. I just pounded out staves with a sledge till it fell. I worked more than half way around before it fell. Pretty uneventful really. It went exactly how i wanted. I was so busy running the other way, I didn't have time to enjoy it.

 

[centralillinois]

I saw a guy a couple years ago lean a deere 200 against a very similar silo and use a sledge to knock out bricks on the opposite side. We hired the guy because if it went any way but east it would've taken out other buildings. He would knock out a couple bricks, jump in the seat and give it a little nudge. He set the bucket up as high as he could which probably wasn't a third of the way up. He'd yell out to see if we could see it move and after a couple tries it fell over where he said it would. His son was as nervous as I've ever seen anyone. But digging underneath one of those things is an accident waiting to happen. A lot of those reinforcing rods are ready to fall apart if they haven't rusted out already. A windy day will take one down in the midwest. Too bad, but you can't be too careful.

 

[AmericanLandMgt]

Given the size of that silo and the size of that machine what would be the best way to get it on the ground? I would think using a cable to pull it down from the top would be safest? Im not sure what that guy was doing, it looked like he dug a pit in front and then was trying to chop a hole in the side to make in fall into the pit? Dosent seem to make since, but if I had to take it down i wouldnt know how to do it right either.

 

[centralillinois]

I guess I would've felt safer if he would've secured it by cable on the opposite side of the hoe. We talked about pulling it over with a cable but the ladder didn't look secure and we had too many buildings nearby. This wasn't a poured silo, it was built with 2 x 3 foot pieces of concrete and circled with steel cables.

The way it fell it looks to me if you attempted to pull it over that you would only pull the top over. Securing the structure with cable every ten feet up and pushing it with the hoe looked like the safest way.

 

[watglen]

If you look closely you can see they drilled or otherwise weakened a section of the wall at the base. He then taps it to break it and it collapses nicely. However, they miscalculated(clearly!) that the remainder of the silo would remain intact i think, expecting it to crumble all the way to the top. Obviously the plan was to fell the thing into the hole and bury it. It just didn't go as planned unfortunately.

One obvious misstep on the operators part was placing the ex where he did. He at least should have made the final blow from the other side of the silo, so when he swung out of the way, the boom would be next to the silo, not the cab.

I have also heard of stave silos dropped using a large caliber rifle.

When we dropped ours we put a heavy rope on the top, more for our own peace of mind as anything. Not sure how much it would help if things went wrong.

Just goes to show you, you can't be too careful.