Latest From Maizefarmer

[RamdomChances]

Just had the latest news from Tim's wife

To answer the question everyone has asked and to thank everyone for the messages wil you please send the attached word document to the forum to be pasted up as I am not a member of the forum.

I appreciate very much every one wanting to contact but I dont have the time at the moment but will check the forum every few days.

Thankyou very much

Sa-Ing

For All

I have had 6 emails to day asking what happened. I havent the time to reply to each so this is what we understand happened.

He was cutting corn with the forage harvester and some barb wire got caught in the cutter box. He stopped to climb down to pull the wire out. There is a magnet at the mouth which automatically stops the cutters and rollers if it sense metal. What he did not realise that the barb wire had gone past the side of the cutter in a small space about 1cm and wrapped around the rollers behind the blades before the magnet sense it. So when he pulled it away from the magnet and thought it would just come out, the wire came away from the magnet and the pto switch back on and the rollers start to turn and pull the wire more in. The end of the wire catched his sleave at the elbow so he bent his arm when he tried to pull away and because this his shirt cannot be pulled off his body and he got pulled into the machine.

When the cutter bar hit his bent arm it cut some way then stop but the roller continues to turn and pull him in to crush the arm and included the shoulder and the right side for his chest.The only part not damaged was the hand with his arm bent it is the last part to go in just when the machine stop the 2nd time. I must be honest like everyone who has been involved and say he is partly to blame. With his experiance he should have known to switch off the engine and not just to put the main gearbox in neutral.

I know some of you work with the rice harvestors. Please please be very careful with farm machinary. This was the very big forage harvestor not the small Thailand rice harvesting machine but actually the rice harvesting machinery is the biggest killer in Thailand with farm accidents. It happens every year and it happen always with the experienced worker who doesn’t it expect it. And it happen so fast maybe 1 or 2 seconds before anyone can do anything.

Tim is lucky to be alive and went to the military hospital in Loei first and then after 11 days the insurance company transferred him to Princess Margaret Hospital in Kowloon. As soon as he is well enough to move again the advice is to move him to Dubai or Abu Dhabi. Our daughter and my dad are with him and I will go back for the weekend on Thursday night with my mom and our son.

I want to thank everyone for all the kind message on the forum which I will print out and take.

Tim has little time for the foreigner community, just all of his friends are Thai and up here are not many foreigners. He just lived his work and family. When he joined the farming forum he did not know that there were so many trying to make a success doing farming and was really happy and pleased. In case you didn’t know he was asking my dad now for a long time to speak to the right people to help make small farms like many foreigners have to be 100% legal. He always felt that this was a positive and constructive thing for foreigners and that they should not only be allowed to do it if they have so much money to do it under the Board of Investment which at the moment is the only way to do it with the rule book if you want the law to recognise and protect your business.

I will keep everyone up to date.

Thank you

edited by me slightly for use on an open forum

Edited December 13, 2006 by RamdomChances