Bridgewater, Va. – Deadly methane gas emanating from a dairy farm’s manure pit killed five people – a Mennonite farmer who climbed into the pit to unclog a pipe and then, in frantic rescue attempts that failed, his wife, two young daughters and a farmhand.
“They all climbed into the pit to help,” Sheriff Donald Farley said. “Before they hit the floor, they were probably all dead.”
Farmers typically take pains to ventilate manure pits, where methane often gathers. A family member questioned whether cattle feed could have trickled into the pit and accelerated the formation of the gas.
“You cannot smell it, you cannot see it, but it’s an instant kill,” explained Dan Brubaker, a family friend who oversaw the construction of the pit decades earlier.
Scott Showalter, 34, apparently was transferring manure from one small, 9-foot-deep pit to a larger holding pond Monday evening, the sheriff said, as is usually done once a week.
When something clogged the drain, Showalter went through the 4-foot opening into the enclosure, which is similar to an underground tank. He would have climbed down a ladder into about 18 inches of manure.
“It was probably something he had done a hundred times,” Farley said. “There was gas in there, and he immediately succumbed.”
Believing Showalter had suffered a heart attack, police said, a farmhand followed him moments later and also passed out.
That’s when another farmworker alerted Showalter’s wife, Phyillis.
“The family took off to try to get him,” said Sonny Layman, who rents a house on the farm. “Phyillis threw the phone out at me and asked me to dial 911.”
Layman instead followed her and two of the Showalters’ four children.
By the time he got to the pit a few feet away, “They were all gone, except Phyillis.”
Layman said he tried to pull the woman out of the pit but could not. She died, along with daughters Shayla, 11, and Christina, 9, and farmhand Amous Stoltzfus, 24.
The Showalters’ two surviving daughters were being cared for by family members.
