Industrial accidents can happen suddenly and the worker’s life depends on the quick reaction of fellow workers and procedures set in place by the employer, such as being compliant with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards. If these two factors are in place then the worker often lives to see their family again as is in the case of an industrial accident involving Tim Michael at his job in Farmington, Washington, 55 miles south of Spokane.

As reported by the Seattle PI, two weeks ago Michael went to work in the morning at the BNP Lentil Co. He’d only had the job for a month before the events of that day cause him to loose his life in a gruesome industrial accident that would change his life forever.

Industrial Accident

You can’t be claustrophobic doing Michael’s job. He began his day by crawling through a small door to get inside a lentil storage bin. The bin is a large round metal building 60 feet across and able to hold 5 million pounds of the dried legumes grown by area farmers.

His next task seemed simple enough. He intended to push a large piece of machinery called a “sweep auger” into place. The sweep auger helps gather and bunch lentils toward a floor hatch where a much an even larger auger spins like a giant corkscrew and pushes thousands of pounds of lentils into a different building.

Michael heaved the equipment backward and into the open hatch. Unfortunately one misstep in this seemingly mundane task caused to be painful and bloody. The big auger underneath grabbed his foot and dragged him to the floor.

He quickly tried to remedy the situation by putting his arms to his side and used all of his strength to pry his leg out of the hatch and auger. “Then I heard this loud pop and my body flung backward and hit the back of my head on the floor,” he said.

The pop was Michael’s foot and lower leg muscles getting ripped off by the auger.

This is when training kicks in and adrenaline gives you time to think. Instead of screaming like girl scout running from a swarm of bees, he actually kept his composure. He’d spent most of his work life working in the logging industry as a tree feller. He’d spent numerous hours in safety classes that taught him what to do if he sliced open a big leg artery, a common and fatal injury in logging as the logger bleeds to death even before they get to camp unless something is done immediately.

He looked down at the mangled limb that had once been his left leg and thought, “‘Whew! I am not going to die today.’”

“I wasn’t bleeding that bad. I knew I didn’t need a tourniquet … and that I could live if I could get some help.” He said, “You might lose your leg, but you can save your life if you think about it.”

Yet this wasn’t the only thing that he faced, you see, the sweep auger he’d just moved was still running and had landed in his lap. It was chewing up his jeans and cutting into his thighs.

Michael dealt with each situation one at a time. He fed his hands into the auger, driven by a four-horsepower motor, and stop it from turning. He then gripped the sweep auger and held it with all of his might until smoke poured from the engine as it overheated and quit.

He tried his cell phone, but there was no signal in the giant storage bin, so he pulled his leg out and tried to walk the 60 feet across the bin to the small door

Stepping on the raw bone was “too soft and painful,” he said, so he did a fireman’s roll across the floor until he reached the door to the outside, and sent a one word text message – “HELP” – to his buddy working in the office.

At that same moment a friend and coworker, John Walker, thought about how long Michael was taking to finish what was usually a quick and simple task.

“I started to go check on him when I heard him screaming,” Walker said. “I crawled in there and just about lost it. It was about the grossest thing I’ve seen in my whole life.”

Walker said Michael was calm and wanted a drink of water and something to ease the pain.

“I’ve known him my whole life and I knew he was tough, but what he did, having to pop himself out.” Walker said astonished, “I kept thinking, he’s going to lose his leg for $9 an hour.”

Emergency crews were called and quickly emerged upon the scene. They used a saw to cut a big hole in the bin to drag Michael to a Northwest MedStar helicopter.

He was transported to Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center in Spokane.

A Long Hard Recovery

Since then he’s undergone six surgeries his leg with a seventh scheduled later this week. Doctors say that when his wound is healed he will be transferred to St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Hospital to be fitted for a prosthetic leg and to begin extensive physical therapy.

Dan Bruce, an owner of BNP Lentil, said Michael was the victim of a freak accident. It was the first serious accident in the business’s 30 years of operation.

“Everybody hopes the best for him,” Bruce said, adding that Michael can have his job back when he’s ready.

Michael said everybody has treated him well and he doesn’t plan on letting an artificial leg get in life’s way.

From his hospital bed he told of his life as an Idaho logger. He revels in the rough stories and lifestyle that go with one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. While reminiscing he recalled broken bones with a cringe, knocked-out teeth with fondness, and employs a belly laugh that makes the stories lighthearted even though they are fodder of a hard lived life.

He said he is surrounded by too many good people to die yet.

“When I was lying there on the floor I asked myself, ‘Do you want to live? Are you happy? Do you love life?’” He asked himself,

The answer to each question is an un equivocal, “Yes.”

Worker’s Compensation

Michael is one tough and inspiring story. We wish him the best on his recovery. The best thing is to have good friends around. His employer also sounds supportive and willing to hire back Michael as an amputee, which is commendable.

There is some time to allow for the recovery of the worker after a serious personal injury or amputation. Though this time is somewhat considerable, it is important to retain legal council during this period to make sure that level of care is adequate to the injury, but also to act as a mediator between the employer and the employee to make sure that care payments and insurance are aligned toward the employee’s best interest.

If you or a loved have gotten injured in an industrial accident that has resulted in brain injury, spinal cord injury, burn injury, or amputation, amongst other long term and life changing serious injuries, it is imperative that you find experienced legal council to aid you through recovery and beyond. Call Phillips Webster today for a consultation.

Learn More About:

• Washington Workers Compensation
• OSHA Safety Regulations
• Construction Accidents Overview