Orange flames and black smoke filled the warm, dry air over Orange County, Indiana recently as a combine caught fire during harvest just as a farmer and his young daughter had been inside the cab moments before it started.
“You’re never prepared necessarily for an event like this to happen and it can happen quite unexpectedly,” says C.J. Fleenor, who farms near the town of Orleans in southern Indiana.
Just a few weeks ago, he was in his combine harvesting soybeans with his four-year-old daughter Caroline in the cab by his side.
“I smelled something that smelled different. However, it was not smoke. It actually was a sweet smell,” said Fleenor. “I didn’t think anything of it. In fact, I looked at my daughter and said, ‘Caroline, did you just open a snack?’ I thought maybe she had opened something to eat, and she said no. So, we kept going and the smell was still there lingering in the air.”
“We were near the end of the row at that point, so I went ahead and told her calmly to put her shoes on and I thought we probably going to need to make a stop here and check things out,” he said.
Luckily, Fleenor’s intuition told him to get out of the cab and his daughter away from the combine.
“I looked around the back of the combine and saw a little bit of smoke. It didn’t look very bad and didn’t think anything of it, so I grabbed the fire extinguisher coming down the ladder. My dad, who helps me running the auger cart, ran over and saw the smoke and put the fire out and some smoldering embers on top of the hydraulic pump. Then we saw smoke underneath the intake so we used the fire extinguisher in that area. We opened the side door and at that point, the top of the fuel tank was already melted and the fuel tank was on fire.”
It wasn’t but a matter of moments later that the combine was completely engulfed in flames while C.J., his daughter, and his dad were far enough away and at a safe distance.
Fleenor contacted his insurance agent and was able to purchase a new combine within a matter of days and is already busy and back to harvest.
Even though that sweet smell he noticed, which could have been either burning copper or burning cooling fluid, served as a warning for Fleenor, he says that farmers should always stop their combines at the first sign that something just isn’t right.
“If you hear something, if you think you see something, and if you smell something, don’t be afraid to stop,” he says. “I’m guilty of that at times. You want to move ahead, and you want to get those acres done. You know you’ve got to go for the day, but don’t be afraid to take a couple of minutes just to get out and double check something because a couple of minutes later certainly would have made a difference with me and my daughter making it both out alive!”
CLICK BELOW to hear Hoosier Ag Today’s full conversation with Orange County farmer C.J. Fleenor, who shares the story of how he and his young daughter safely escaped a combine fire during harvest.
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