In our grain elevator studies, we always keep in mind the danger to workers. We’ve reported construction-site accidents, some resulting in death. Never had we heard of anything as bad as the accident at Albert City, Iowa on Friday, June 19, 1970.
Tillotson Construction Co. built a 252,000-bushel elevator at Albert City in 1954. My uncles, the late Charles J. Tillotson and Michael Tillotson, worked on that job and have shared memories of the experience on this blog. The elevator was built with eight tanks measuring 18 feet in diameter and reaching 120 feet in height.
Naturally, the question arises: Did the accident occur at an annex to the Tillotson elevator. No, the Des Moines Register’s photo shows another elevator with two storage annexes.
In any case, the 1970 tragedy hits close to home.
Newspaper accounts explain that the top of a tank collapsed as a crew was finishing construction, and the men–ranging in age from 18 to 49 years old–plunged to their deaths. Another man who was at work in the bottom of the tank was seriously injured. Extricating the victims, who were trapped amid steel and wet concrete, was a monumental challenge.
Des Moines Tribune, Saturday, June 20, 1970:
A Mason City man remained in serious condition Saturday in a Storm Lake hospital with injuries suffered Friday [June 19] when a roof platform atop a concrete grain elevator collapsed, plunging seven other men 130 feet to their deaths.
Donald Peterson, 48, who suffered internal injuries and shock, was working on the ground inside the elevator when the platform collapsed. He was buried by wet concrete and falling debris.
The seven dead construction workers are:
James Jorstad, of Hillsboro, N.D. and his brother Ronald, 23, of Cummings, N.D.; Virgil Buchholtz, 27, of Albert City; Michael McCormick, 18, or Rembrandt; Kenneth Andre, 40, of Fenton; Roger Mitchell, 49, of Mankato, Minn.; and Steven Mangold, 29, of Linn Grove.
Duane Rasmussen, 32, of Ada, Minn., construction superintendent, said two other workers escaped,
Leif Rodal, 60, of Oslo, Minn., was on a catwalk leading to an adjacent elevator also under construction, and stayed on the catwalk.
E. Frank Klahs, Jr., of Rembrandt was on the platform when it collapsed but grabbed the outer edge of the elevator and hand-crawled 30 feet to a catwalk.
Rasmussen said he was on the ground a few feet from the elevator when the collapse occurred.
“I have no idea what caused it,” he said.
Crews from the T.E. Ibberson Co., of Minneapolis have been building the twin concrete-and-steel elevators for the Farmers Co-operative Elevator Co. here since April. The structures are 130 feet tall and 55 feet in diameter, with concrete walls eight inches thick.
The roofs were to have been completed Friday.
Rasmussen said, “We had poured about 30 yards of concrete for the roof before [the accident].”
That amount of concrete would weigh more than 60 tons.
One workman said the “whole platform gave way after beams on one side slipped down and everything came tumbling down.”
Rasmussen said the men killed in the fall were buried under a four-foot pile of debris.
Rescue operations were hampered because the only ground-level opening to the elevator was blocked by rubble that had to be removed by digging.
A call to AgState Cooperative put us in touch with Marc Mears, chief operating officer. He says AgStates runs both Albert City elevators. The Tillotson elevator continues to operate well, and Google Maps shows it looking well, too.
“The facility is referred to as the North House and is used primarily as a place to unload beans during times that most of the inbound truck activity is corn unloads,” Mears says. “This allows the bean trucks to unload more quickly and avoids having to switch one of the pits away from corn at the South House.”
Given the anecdotes of my uncles’ personal experiences, and the catastrophe at the nearby complex, the North House in Albert City is one of the most significant elevators in the portfolio.
