By STAN MADDUX Indiana Correspondent ROME CITY, Ind. — The list of children killed while riding in the bucket of a skid loader on a farm has grown longer. It’s a practice safety experts have long urged against because of how easily riders can be thrown out of buckets from skid loaders, prone to bouncing even on flat surfaces. “You’re always just one bounce from being bounced out or losing your balance trying to hang on,” said Dennis Murphy, professor emeritus in agricultural safety at Pennsylvania State University. The latest casualty happened July 30 on a small farm outside Wawaka in northeastern Indiana, between Rome City and Ligonier. Alivea Kurtz, 4, was riding in the bucket of a skid loader operated by her grandmother, Stacey Schermerhorn, according to the Noble County Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Doug Ewell said Schermerhorn was giving CPR to the girl when he arrived. Ewell said he took over lifesaving efforts until the arrival of paramedics, who also could not restore to the girl, pronounced dead at the scene. He said the skid loader was being operated in a field of wheat recently harvested and turned over. Officials believe the machine was being used to pick up large rocks exposed from the soil just being tilled. At some point, the girl fell out of the bucket and was struck by the skid loader, they said. According to her obituary, Alivea was a preschool student in Ligonier, about 20 miles south of Shipshewana, an Amish community where a young boy in 2014 also died from riding in the bucket of a skid steer on a farm. Police said 7-year-old Kevin Lambright was sitting on a makeshift seat not fastened to the bucket and slid off when the skid steer, operated by a family member, shifted. And last year, a 6-year-old in southwestern Michigan and a 3-year-old girl near Akron, Ohio, lost their lives from riding in skid steer buckets. Murphy said a skid loader with its short body doesn’t have much shock-absorbing ability, but the bucket has even less. The result is a catapulting effect, particularly for children lacking the strength needed to hang on – and once someone is thrown from the bucket, the driver has virtually no time to stop. Bill Field, an agricultural safety expert at Purdue University, said the slingshot effect was great enough once to throw out a heavy chain laying loose in the bucket of the skid steer he was operating to clear fallen trees from his orchard. “I hit a bump and that big heavy chain popped right out of the bucket,” he recalled. Field said skid steer tragedies have occurred with enough frequency over the years that criminal charges are beginning to emerge, when previously those cases were pretty much overlooked. He said the machines are useful, but designed for work and should not be taken lightly. He said skid steer-related deaths have also occurred from bales of hay in buckets falling on drivers and operators; because of restricted vision from how the machines are designed, running over a person; and even an object causing a rollover. Field said low seats often keep drivers from seeing properly in all directions and anything on the ground in front or behind them can go unnoticed. He’s been pushing for cameras to be installed on skid steers with monitors for drivers to see into blind spots. ‘’You’re so down inside of the thing you have no way of looking around you,’’ Field explained. |
