BRIDGEWATER, Va. (July 3) - Deadly methane gas emanating from a dairy farm's manure pit killed five people - a Mennonite farmer who climbed into the pit to unclog a pipe, and then, in frantic rescue attempts that failed, his wife, two young daughters and a farmhand.
They all climbed into the pit to help," Sheriff Donald Farley said. "Before they hit the floor, they were probably all dead."
Farmers typically take pains to ventilate manure pits where methane often gathers. A family member questioned whether cattle feed could have trickled into the pit and accelerated the formation of the gas.
"You cannot smell it, you cannot see it, but it's an instant kill," explained Dan Brubaker, a family friend who oversaw the construction of the pit decades earlier.
Scott Showalter, 34, apparently was transferring manure from one small pit to a larger holding pond on Monday evening, the sheriff said.
About once a week, waste is pumped from the roughly 9-foot-deep pit into a larger pond. When something clogged the drain, Showalter shimmied through the 4-foot opening into the enclosure, which is similar to an underground tank. He would have climbed down a ladder into about 18 inches of manure.
"It was probably something he had done a hundred times," Farley said. "There was gas in there and he immediately succumbed."
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