Eye On Ag - Cleaning Up at SunPrairie

A view from the top defines just how much grain spilled and how much damage was done when the 720-thousand bushel bin collapsed at SunPrairie Grain in Minot - in the early morning hours of March 25th Nearly two weeks later progress is being made to carefully reclaim and clean the hard red spring wheat but at a slow pace because of all the debris hidden within the grain Brad Haugeberg Minot SunPrairie Grain Manager On this side we re using payloaders and they re running it across a screener to shake out all the metal parts and all the other things Grain Vacuum machine Brad Haugeberg Minot SunPrairie Grain Manager On the back side they re using they re using two big commercial vacuums truck vacs and they re doing the same thing with another screen on the other side SunPrairie Grain Manager Brad Haugeberg says when the bin let go countless nuts bolts and washers that were holding the bin together mixed with the grain along with large and small piece of tin from the bin All of which have to be separated before the grain can be loaded into rail cars to be shipped At the same time safety is still a concern The collapsing bin compromised the integrity of its twin that was full of sunflowers Brad Haugeberg Minot SunPrairie Grain Manager There s damage been inflicted to it all the way up and down that side so that bin will have to come down Along with that the force of the grain lifted rail cars off the tracks and piled up underneath them The grain vacs are carefully maneuvering around the 14 000 pound cars as they extract the grain All the while structural engineers are methodically examining the wreckage to determine what caused the massive failure Brad Haugeberg Minot SunPrairie Grain Manager Probably everyone of them has a different theory But the one thing they all agree upon is that they will determine the origin and cause once they get enough of it uncovered Haugeberg expects the work to last three week a lengthy considering it only took 20 working hours to fill the bin at harvest Brad Haugeberg Minot SunPrairie Grain Manager Because there is some safety issues yeah we re working strictly daylight hours which is roughly 7 a m to 8 p m Even with the amount of debris Haugeberg hopes to reclaim a vast majority of the grain that was in the bin The cost to pick the grain off the ground clean it and reload it is expected to cost over a million dollars The cost to replace the bins and who s paying for the damage is still as unknown at this point as the cause of the failure But Haugeberg says all those questions will be answered in due time With Your Eye On Agriculture Shaun Sipma KX News