Airdrie (Rural Roots Canada) – In June 2021, Dennis Blackburn visited his father’s farm near Carstairs, Alberta. It was his birthday weekend, and he, his wife Rebecca, and another couple were enjoying a quiet Saturday morning. After breakfast and coffee, Blackburn suggested going skeet shooting. Typical of the fickle nature of Alberta weather, storm clouds had formed on the horizon as they piled into their pickup and headed out onto the sprawling property.
Dennis and his wife Rebecca / Photo Courtesy: Dennis Blackburn
Blackburn, a branch manager at a credit union in Airdrie, Alberta, is no stranger to working on farms. Aside from his father’s property, his grandparents owned a dairy farm he often visited as a child. From the age of eight, he was working the machinery on their land including tractors and ATVs. “I’ve never been worried,” said Blackburn. “I’ve driven tractors on the farm and in Canada Day parades so I’m comfortable around them.”
On their way to the north pasture, Blackburn spotted several uprooted fence posts at the bottom of an incline along a stretch of the property where he had planned to build a home with his wife. Putting the skeet shooting on hold, he drove the truck down the incline to inspect the posts. “I got the truck stuck looking at these fence posts. The ground was marshy and much wetter than I anticipated.”
He trudged back to the barn, grabbed some chains and hopped on his dad’s tractor. With his buddy alongside, they headed back to where the truck remained idle, its tires firmly entrenched in the soft earth. By this point, the skies had opened and rain and hail were falling from the dark clouds above. He hesitated momentarily but decided to move ahead with the towing operation. “We were going to head back to the farm and deal with it after, but we had the chains and tractor so I figured let’s pull it out now before the ground gets even more wet.”
Unaware of the impending danger, Blackburn started slowing edging the tractor down the incline towards the stuck truck. However, with the rain and hail pelting him, his visibility was reduced and the ground had become treacherous. That’s when the tractor took a sudden, terrifying turn. What had been a simple descent quickly deteriorated into a situation that had gotten out of control.
“I pushed the brake in. Anyone who knows how to drive a tractor knows that when you push the clutch in, you disengage the transmission and it speeds up. Yeah, that was bad,” he remembered thinking. “When it sped up, it started sliding sideways and the right front tire hit a badger hole. I was just about to bail off the tractor because it was going way too fast and I was way too steep. When it hit the badger hole, it threw me down the hill.”
As he tumbled down, so did the tractor. He tried to scurry out of the way, but couldn’t avoid the inevitable.
“I saw the tractor coming. I put my right hand above my head and it rolled right over me.”
It struck his arm, neck and lower back, smooshing him into the marshy soil. The pain was excruciating. His wife and friends rushed over as the tractor came to rest nearby, on its side, its engine smoking. He blacked out momentarily but was quickly brought back to consciousness by his wife, who was smacking his cheek. “She thought I had just knocked myself out because I looked fine. I wasn’t bleeding or anything. But when I opened my eyes, apparently they were pointing in different directions. I was turning blue because of a lack of oxygen. I told them to call 9-1-1.”
The Aftermath
Police, fire, and paramedics all arrived within ten minutes. They immediately dispatched STARS Air Ambulance when they were told it was a tractor rollover. The fire department winched him up the hill and told his wife he had a 20% chance of surviving. He was loaded onto the helicopter and flown to Calgary.
Dennis in the hospital/ Photo Courtesy: Dennis Blackburn
Slipping in and out of consciousness, the medical team at Calgary Foothills Hospital confirmed the severity of his injuries. “I broke every vertebra in my neck and back,” Blackburn explained. “I tore ligaments and had considerable nerve damage into my right arm and leg because it squashed them. I had a blood clot that formed in my right eye so I couldn’t see out of it. I also broke a lot of my teeth.”
Doctors were stunned that Blackburn could still move his feet and his fingers, considering he had bleeding on his spine. They still prepared him and his wife to expect the worst. “They said I was at a very, very high risk of being a paraplegic. Most likely, I would never walk again.”
Blackburn was lucky to be alive. According to the latest report from Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting (CAIR), there were 624 farm-related deaths between 2011 and 2020. A majority of those deaths (66%) were machine-related, either from machine rollovers, runovers, or machine entanglements. The vast majority of those deaths (91%) were male.
After more than eight hours of surgery, Blackburn woke up in his hospital room with his wife at his side on what he calls one of the best days of his life. Going into it, he wasn’t confident he would wake up, period. He knew it would be a long road to full recovery, but he kept a positive attitude. What happened next was nothing short of remarkable.
Not a fan of hospitals, Blackburn worked hard to get his body moving and set mini milestones for himself. On the Tuesday following the rollover, he was able to sit up in his hospital bed. By Wednesday, he was able to stand up. On Thursday, he managed to take a few steps. Every hour, he would get up and take a few tentative steps to the end of the bed, to the door, then into the ward. It wasn’t easy.
X-Rays showing the plates he has in Dennis’ neck / Photo Courtesy: Dennis Blackburn
“Everything hurt,” he said. “It’s hard to explain. Your brain is there, but your body won’t move. And you don’t realize how heavy parts of your body are until they don’t work properly. My arm just kind of hung there. My whole body was really, really stiff. It took everything out of me to walk 15 feet and not fall.”
Despite those struggles, he was making incredible progress. From Thursday to Sunday, he practiced walking with the physiotherapists and on his own. Doctors were impressed but warned he would likely have pain for the rest of his life. As he kept strengthening his body, doctors opted to discharge him from the hospital to continue his recovery and rehabilitation at home. He had been in the hospital for nine days – an astonishing outcome given the initial six-to-nine-month hospital recovery estimate.
In the days, weeks, and months that followed, Blackburn worked hard to regain strength in his arm, leg, and body. He had to undergo surgery for his vocal cords, which were damaged during intubation and his initial surgery on his vertebrae. Still, by November 2021, he was back at work part-time before transitioning to full-time by December. He counts every day as a blessing.
Understanding Your Machinery
Blackburn’s comfort around, and knowledge of, the tractor on his dad’s farm proves no matter how familiar you might be with farm equipment, there’s always a risk. AgSafe Alberta, the health and safety association for Alberta-based agricultural producers, stresses the importance of proper training, skill, and experience to help prevent accidents from happening.
“Operators need a good understanding of each tractor’s center of gravity, how the load or implement can affect that center of gravity, what the hazards that can contribute to a rollover occurring are and what they can do to prevent a rollover from happening,” said Kaia Fossheim, AgSafe Alberta’s Safety Manager. “Combine that knowledge with intentional and unrushed hands-on experience in a controlled environment and you will have already drastically reduced the risk of a rollover happening.”
Some basic prevention measures include keeping your turns slow and wide, staying a safe distance away from embankments and ditches, and driving with the forks or bucket as low as possible when they are loaded. If you’re working in an area where a rollover is possible, check the ground conditions. “You may find the ground too soft and decide that what you were going to do can wait a day or two,” said Fossheim.
If you work on inclines often, check your owner’s manual. You may be able to set the tractor wheels in a wider position to increase stability. Drive slowly and according to the conditions and the load you’re carrying. On some operations, the solution may be as simple as taking a slightly longer but much safer route.
When it comes to safety training, Fossheim recommended being mentored and watched by someone competent as an important step in the learning process. Training should involve having that competent person in the buddy seat beside the learner, watching and supporting them as they practice their skills. “Learning how to operate a tractor with a heavy implement attached will take time, and the learner will need to be given the time to gain the necessary skill,” she added.
Some additional measures to consider that don’t prevent rollovers but help prevent serious injury or death include wearing a seatbelt while working in a tractor with a cab, as it will help keep you in the protective structure in case of a rollover. For older tractors without a cab, Fossheim said you should consider installing and using a Roll-Over Protective Structure (ROPS) and seatbelt, another option that helps protect the operator in the event of a rollover.
Finally, overconfidence can be dangerous and lead to a failure to recognize the hazards and risks. Always assess the situation beforehand. “It is so important to stop and think about what could go wrong, especially if the conditions aren’t ideal,” stated Fossheim. “The task can wait until conditions improve and you can spare yourself so much unnecessary pain.”
A Fresh Perspective on Life
More than three years since the tractor mashed his body into the ground, Blackburn feels like he’s back to his old self. His recovery continues to this day, but he knows it could have been so much worse. Perhaps most surprisingly, Blackburn still uses the tractor, which his father repaired following the rollover. “I won’t drive the tractor on a hill ever again, but I have driven it around the farm,” he chuckled. “Otherwise, I have no real hesitations or fear about using it and no post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the rollover. I’m just so grateful that I’m here”
He reiterated the importance of knowing your farm equipment. “Make sure you’re comfortable with the equipment, and always think, ‘How can this hurt me?’”? Because tractors kill people. When you’re getting on a tractor, they move so slowly that you don’t worry too much about it. I always thought if it’s out of control and there’s no cab, I’ll jump off it. But in that split second where it threw me down the hill, I couldn’t get out of the way.”
Blackburn admitted the near-fatal accident changed the way he approached his life and reinforced his love for the little things. “I used to get really worked up about things that I had no control over whatsoever. Every day I have is a day I almost didn’t, so I’m going to do my best every day and focus on the little things that make me happy, like playing cards with my wife, walking the dogs, and even eating ginger beef,” he declared.
“Take those small moments of time and enjoy them. Time is all we have. Getting worked up and putting yourself into a negative head space isn’t productive and doesn’t help with any kind of recovery. You can’t control the day, but you can control your perspective.”
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