PASCO — Franklin County firefighters rescued a woman trapped in a pit by a piece of machinery for more than an hour Tuesday.
The employee at Bengen Farms was working near a pit auger used to feed cattle at the Ruby Ridge Dairy when her leg became caught in the equipment just after 8:20 a.m.
Both legs were pulled into the hole before other employees could shut off power to the metal corkscrew-type machine, said Franklin County Fire District 3 Chief Mike Harris.
When Harris and other medical staff initially arrived, they found the woman sitting on the edge of the pit trapped from the knees down. She was seriously hurt, but they couldn’t simply reverse the direction of the machine without hurting her even more.
Instead, they needed to pull out the entire piece of equipment from the hole.
To get at it, they needed to shovel a pile of dry, powdery meal away from where they needed to cut. That presented its own dangers: An errant spark could have ignited the airborne powder.
That’s where the remoteness of the farm about 20 miles north of Pasco hampered their efforts, said Harris. Closer to town, they could have called in a vacuum truck, but they didn’t have time for that Tuesday.
“We improvised and used manpower and shovels,” Harris said.
Before starting the process, they made sure the electricity to the machine was off and detached the belts.
As they were working, a Life Flight emergency helicopter arrived. The medic from the helicopter worked with the other firefighters, who also had help from the Pasco Fire Department’s Technical Rescue Team, Walla Walla County Fire District 5 and the Franklin County Sheriff’s Office.
They worked for 40 minutes cutting through the bottom of the auger.
“It seemed like it went on for hours,” Harris said.
The woman was immediately flown to Kadlec Regional Medical Center in Richland. Her condition was not available Tuesday afternoon.
