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An Amish farmer's leg, badly broken, was wrapped several times around a power takeoff drive shaft.
Fortunately, members of the Bart Township Fire Company had special training in farm-related accidents.
They knew how to power down the diesel engine and disconnect the batteries. They had learned how to treat injuries of entanglement.
It was another testament to the value of Penn State's first-of-its-kind Managing Agricultural Emergencies training programs.
Since 2001, when the expanded farm-emergency training began, nearly 300 emergency responders from Lancaster County have taken part in the hands-on instruction.
"You hope you never use it, but it prepares you to what you're going to see in the field," said Bart fire Chief Curt Woerth, whose firefighters have participated in three specialized training sessions.
Farming presents unique hazards for which most emergency responders have never received training, including tractor accidents, machinery entanglements, grain bin entrapments, silo gases and large animal rescues.
Farming is second only to mining as the most dangerous line of work in America.
On average, about 5,000 workers on Pennsylvania farms each year are injured seriously enough that they miss some work.
In 2008, about 44 people died on farms in 24 counties in Pennsylvania, a significant jump from the year before. Lancaster County had six fatalities in 2008, the most in the state.
Handling and assessing farm accidents is often radically different from what firefighters and EMTs normally face.
There's an axiom in emergency training known as the "golden hour," which states: Get a severely injured person to a trauma center within an hour of the accident and odds are they will survive.
Because of that, crews at vehicle accidents haul out the Jaws of Life device and work feverishly to extricate victims.
"But a lot of times, on farm accidents, it's going to be past that," said Eric Rickenbach, an instructor who teaches many of the classes to fire companies in Lancaster, Lebanon and Berks counties.
Victims often aren't even discovered for well past the first hour, said Davis Hill, director of Penn State's Managing Agricultural Emergencies Program.
When that happens, the body starts compensating for its injuries, Hill said. For example, an overturned tractor that has pinned a person might be acting like a tourniquet. Rush in and remove the tractor, and toxins building up in the body might rush to the heart, causing a heart attack.
"It's what we've learned from earthquake rescues," Hill said. "There are people trapped two to three days, and they're breathing, alert and oriented. Then, when you take the load off, they die immediately."
In the ag-emergency training courses, rescuers learn how to take a step back and assess the scene before acting. They practice with real farm equipment and dummies as victims.
There also is technical, specialized equipment on farms. Start tinkering and you can do more harm than good.
"There are corn-picker machines still being used, still entrapping people," Hill said. "That's a machine, if you're not familiar with how it operates, that you can do a lot of things for a long time before you make any headway.
"You look at some of the machines farmers use and there are springs, belts, power sources, and mechanical, hydraulic and electrical sources at the same time. If you pull the wrong lever or spread the wrong thing, you could make a bad situation worse."
What drove Hill to become a farm-accident-training advocate in 1979 was a group of stricken EMTs showing up at his Cooperative Extension office in New York state.
"They had spent hours with a farmer trapped in a baler, and he had died before their eyes," Hill said, "They had used the Jaws of Life and something else, and they didn't work ,and it kept getting worse and worse."
The Penn State program also offers a course on large-animal rescues and another on rescuing animals in barn fires.
There also are courses on farm chemical emergencies and handling emergencies in confined spaces.
For more information on courses and scheduling, go to www.farmemergencies.psu.edu.
Even though participation in the Penn State program continues to grow yearly, the state's budget problems are likely to cause the state Department of Agriculture to cut off funding, Hill said.
That means emergency responders would have to pay their own way, about $25 per firefighter for each course.
The Bart Township Fire Company, which had signed up about 25 members for a course this fall, has had to cancel.
That's a shame, Rickenbach said. "Farmers and firefighters are two of the most important groups of people we have in the state. This program helps both those groups at the same time."
E-mail: acrable@lnpnews.com
