A Nebraska farmer was faced with a life or death decision when he was pulled into a grain auger in April. While transferring his corn harvest, 63-year-old Kurtis Kaser stepped into a hole that turned out to be an auger. The auger began feeding Kaser's body into its mechanism, and would have killed him had he not cut his body away from the trapped leg. Kaser told CNN, "I didn’t know what to do and I didn’t know how long I would keep my consciousness either, I about gave up but then I remembered I had my pocket knife.”
“I didn’t have a phone on me, I didn’t know where it had gone, so I just started cutting with the knife,” he said. “I knew I was done cutting because I felt a funny feeling, maybe it was a tendon I cut.”
Once he released himself from the machine, Kaser crawled to his house using his elbows so he could reach a phone to call for help.
“I stopped for a little bit but I didn’t want to stop for long in case I passed out, there was no way for me to get help, everyone was gone at the time, I just did what I had to do and they (first responders) got me in a helicopter,” he said.
A grain auger is a tube containing a solid shaft in the center with a spiral of flat steel that is welded onto the center shaft. Auger's are used to fill grain bins for storage.