KEENESBURG, Colo. — Denver7’s Allie Jennerjahn was working to learn more Friday morning about the deaths of six people in a “confined space” accident at a dairy in Weld County.
We know the accident occurred Wednesday evening at Prospect Valley Dairy in Keenesburg and that a high school student was among the victims.
Dispatch calls indicated gas masks may be necessary during the rescue effort. In a statement to Denver7, the Weld County coroner’s office said the deaths were being investigated as a possible gas exposure but that an autopsy would determine an official cause of death.
Few other details had been confirmed publicly in the 36 hours following the tragedy.
We spoke to a man who said he used to work at the dairy and was friends with the people who died.
“No one could tell me what happened here but something happened,” he told us Thursday. “That's why I came, because they were my friends.”
While we work to confirm more from officials, we are digging into the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s definition of a “confined space.”
The regulatory agency defines a confined space as one that:
- Is large enough for a worker to enter and complete a task in,
- Has limited or restricted means of entry or exit, and
- Is not designed for continuous human occupancy.
OSHA has a lengthy list of possible confined spaces in agriculture, several of which could also involve gas exposure:
- Grain and feed storage facilities
- Corrugated steel bins
- Silos
- Sumps, tunnels, and pump pits
- Dump pits
- Forage storage
- Manure storage tanks
- Manure/bio-digester units
- Manure transport vehicles (tanks and applicators)
- Bulk transport vehicles
- Sprayer and chemical transport vehicles
- Forage and silage dump wagons
- Feed grinders/mixers
- Feed mixer wagons/tanks
- Storage and mixing tanks, bins, and silos
- Fermentation vessels
- Environmentally controlled fruit and vegetable storage units
- Bulk liquid storage tanks
- Containment areas around diked storage tanks
- Wells, cisterns, dry wells, septic tanks
- Grain driers
- Fuel storage tanks
Denver7 is continuing its work to learn more about what happened at the dairy and will update our online coverage here and in our initial reporting when we have more confirmed.
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