A man who died in a grain elevator accident on Sunday near Fremont has been identified as 32 year old Zane Fecht of Bellevue.
Rescue crews were called to Interstate Commodities, Inc. Sunday on a report of a missing employee. "He was inside and he was trying to break some grain free," Fremont Fire Captain Pat Tawney says. "He was accompanied by a co-worker who walked away for a for few minutes, and when he came back they lost contact with him."
A seven-and-a-half hour rescue operation followed. Reaching the grain level in the elevator required rescue team members to rappel down approximately 125 feet and they were suspended from the ropes.
"We couldn't put anybody in there because we just couldn't trust the grain. We were worried of a collapse and we'd be in the same situation."
Tawney says it was a slow, long process that followed. "We had to do it right and we didn't want anybody else to get hurt."
They eventually reached the Fecht. "It's too bad this had to happen and it's probably preventable but we did what we had to do and we got him out and everybody on our end is safe, so that's good."
Tawney says some department members just finished grain rescue training about three weeks ago and three days of training were scheduled to begin Monday for others.