Samuel Derks, a 13 year old youth, was nearly killed in a farming accident in Gentry County on July 24th. He recounted his experience in his own words in the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association newsletter of September 21st.
On the afternoon of the 24th, he and his dad were haying on CRP ground his dad had bought from his uncle. He was stacking up hay bales in groups of seven, while his dad was headed to the Farm Service Agency 20 miles away. Derks finished one small piece and went to get a bale of hay in front of a pond on the land. The bale spike was in front of the tractor. Derks put the tractor in reverse, but it wouldn’t reverse, and the wheels started spinning. The tractor started sliding into the pond. Derks slammed on the breaks, but the tractor wouldn’t stop. He tried to open the door to get out, but the door wouldn’t open. Water began coming into the cab.
The next thing Derks knew, he was swimming up to the top of the pond, swimming to the edge, and crawling out. He called his dad, but the phone had gotten wet and the call only lasted two seconds. However, his dad turned around from Albany to get back home and called his nephew and wife to check on him.
Derks received cuts and scratches over his knuckles and arms, but he was able to survive the accident.
It turned out the tractor was so deep that the wrecker service had to hire a scuba diver to find the tractor and hook the cable up to it. The scuba diver said the tractor was 25 feet deep under water. When the tractor finally emerged, they found that the front window glass was shattered and the back window was opened. When the front glass was shattered and the water rushed in, the back window was pushed open and Derks was pushed out of the cab.
As for words of wisdom, Derks wrote, “I want to tell parents and adults to think about the experience level that we younger people lack when it comes to working in tractors or to solve problem situations that arise in the field. I want them to be mindful about leaving us alone to do tractor work in a field. I want people to think about their surroundings when working in a field; are there waterways, ditches, or ponds?”
The story was part of the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association’s Farm Safety Week campaign for September 16th to 23rd. MCA Executive Vice-President Mike Deering wrote his own story about how one evening, his family left food for his father, came back afterwards, and found it hadn’t been touched. His father had been killed in a farming accident when the tractor he was operating rolled over on him when he was carrying hay across a muddy dam.
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