7/05/2009 - First Hand Account of Near Confined Space Fatality in NZ

A Wakefield man has described the horror of being trapped up to his eyes by rocks in a hopper, saying he thought he would never get out alive.

“The moment it hit me and I realised what had happened, and I couldn’t move anything, I just thought I was dead,” said Philip Dick, 53.

Mr Dick was saved only after his workmates brother Tony, nephew Ben Palmer and truck driver Frank Griffith dug him out of the hopper at a Pig Valley quarry with their bare hands on Monday afternoon.

Two days after the drama, Mr Dick is still deeply upset by what happened.

He spoke briefly with The Nelson Mail from his Wakefield home this morning, saying he hoped his experience would act as a warning to others in industry, and “jolt” them to think twice about taking risks.

“We are in a small industry, and people are aware of the dangers. Don’t go into a hopper that’s the message,” he said.

Mr Dick and his brother own the quarry near Wakefield where the accident happened. He had climbed into the bottom of the hopper to clear a blockage when he became trapped. He said he had worked in the industry for 20 years.

“I just thought to myself, `Wouldn’t it be a horrible feeling to see the loader bucket?’, and I looked up and there it was coming over top of me.

“Thank goodness I looked up if I hadn’t, it would have dumped right on my shoulders and broken my back. I would’ve been folded up like a staple.

“It happened that quick, I was buried up to my eyes. That was it I couldn’t move a muscle.”

Mr Dick said he was fortunate that his nephew heard him call out and found him, as his brother was coming back with the loader to dump another bucketful of rocks into the hopper.

“That’s how close it was.”

Mr Dick said Mr Palmer, who was servicing equipment in the workshop, something they did only every six months or so, thought he had heard a goat and went to investigate.

“He was lucky to hear it there was machinery running and he was a long way away. Thank goodness for young ears.

“A lot of people would’ve ignored it, too. He didn’t realise it was a human until he got a bit closer.”He said it was only the heroic efforts of the men that saved him.

“I was running out of breath, rocks were coming in on my chest, and it was very hard to get the rocks out because they are reasonably big. Every one they pulled out, three more would roll down, and they had to throw them out of the top of the bin.”

Mr Dick said he was moving down in the hopper, and could feel his leg bending, which is how he believes his knee was hurt.

After the men got him breathing a bit better, they got a grinder and cut a hole in the hopper underneath him so the rocks could run out, he said.

Mr Dick said he had been thinking about the incident a lot, and believed the ideal way to clear a blocked hopper was to get a long length of steel reinforcing rod and to stay outside and poke it down into the hopper.

“It’s so simple, and it would save a lot of lives in New Zealand.”

There have been a number of deaths and serious injuries caused to workers who have entered hopper-like machinery, including an incident last year when a worker at Richmond’s Firth Industries plant died after being trapped in a sand hopper