The RM of Morris Fire Department has added grain rescue gear to it’s arsenal of tools to better serve and protect area residents. It came through a donation by the Winnipeg-based company, G3.

“We greatly appreciate when businesses within the community choose to support us,” says Fire Chief Trevor Dackow. “Let’s face it. We provide a valuable service for everybody in the RM, from each individual citizen to business and industry.”

Dackow emphasizes that agriculture is an important industry in southern Manitoba and in the RM. That fact is reflected in their training.

“Back in the early summer, the Canadian Agricultural Safety Association was promoting some grain rescue training in Carman. We had members from all three of our halls, including myself, attend to receive training. After that, G3 reached out to the agricultural safety people and said, we'll offer the RM of Morris – and I believe other RMs were offered the same thing – a set of this rescue gear as a donation.”

The RM will base its grain rescue gear in the Rosenort Fire Hall, which situated at the center of the municipality.

To know how it works, a person has to know grain.

“The problem with grain and various other types of agricultural commodities is, it's rather granular in texture. So, you end end up with a big silo full of stuff that resembles beans or seeds or even popcorn.”

“Under normal circumstances,” adds Dackow, “this stuff is fairly compacted. Although it’ll flow if you open the vent at the bottom of a bin, it's generally fairly stable. But there are situations where people need to walk across the surface of this, and there's a potential for it to become unstable very, very quickly.”

And what happens then?

“It's like stereotypical movie quicksand. You start sinking and eventually your head’s gonna become under the product and you're going to suffocate," said Dackow.

To rescue the victim, firefighters will use four panels that resemble police riot shields.

“Big, slightly curved panels. Our people can get in and deploy these four panels in a circle around the entrapment victim and we push [the panels] down as far as we can. Then we insert an auger powered by an electric cordless drill and use the auger to suck the product out around the person, until it's down enough probably to around their knees till we can extract the person from their entrapment.”

Dackow says they will need to take precautions to make sure their own members don’t become entrapped as well when employing rescue gear. The RM of Morris has yet to encounter a situation where this type of equipment is needed.

The gear is valued at roughly $5000 per set.