An autopsy’s being done today on a rural Iowa man who died in a grain bin as he was doing farm work. Floyd County Sheriff Rick Lynch says a man in rural Greene called around nine Thursday morning to say he’d been working on a corn bin. The man said his father-in-law had been climbing a ladder to check the bin, and when he looked again he didn’t see the man and found he’d fallen into the bin. The farmer shut down his equipment and called 911. The dead man’s identified as 83-year-old George Schultz of Greene. Fire, police, rescue and sheriff personnel came and determined before long that Schultz was dead, possibly dragged further down into the smothering grain by an augur being used to move it. Still, it was two hours before they could cut holes in the bin and remove enough grain to retrieve his body. They even had someone bring out beams and plywood so if they could get near the victim they could shore up the grain and take the pressure off to rescue the person alive. Sheriff Lynch says it’s a rural area and they’re familiar with calls to farm accidents. There was one just last spring in neighboring Mitchell County, but it was a rescue case as they were able to shore up the corn and get the victim out alive. Sheriff Lynch says the Floyd County Search and Rescue Unit’s had special training for this kind of farm accident. Almost all the members have gone for special training in how to deal with farm incidents, and so have members of fire departments in and around Floyd County.
