A grain silo containing roughly 30,000 bushels of soybeans collapsed Wednesday afternoon at the Donovan Farmers Co-Op Elevator in Iroquois County, Illinois. A video of the collapse can be seen on Central Illinois Meteorologist Jacob Dickey's Facebook.
The incident began when a local ambulance crew, already in the area for an unrelated call, noticed a growing bulge on the north side of the concrete silo around 10:30 a.m. The crew immediately contacted Martinton Fire Chief Jeff Meyer, who recognized the potential danger and mobilized firefighters from adjacent communities to secure the area and evacuate nearby workers.
After workers were evacuated from the potential collapse zone, facility workers began attempting to remove the stored soybeans from the structure.
By early afternoon, a shift in the stored grain signaled the structure was failing. At 12:52 p.m., the silo gave way, spilling soybeans and debris across the site. The collapse also brought down power poles and lines that supplied electricity to the village, causing an outage that lasted into the night.
“Thanks to the observant eye of the ambulance personnel at the original call, we were able to evacuate and secure the area around the silo,” Meyer said. “This action certainly prevented what may have been life-threatening injuries or even fatalities.”
The cause of the structural failure has not been confirmed, but emergency officials credited quick communication and coordinated response efforts for preventing what could have been a far more serious incident. Despite there being about 30 people in the area at the time, no injuries were reported.