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.
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 pit to a larger holding pond on Monday evening, the sheriff said.
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About once a week, waste is pumped from the roughly 9-foot-deep pit into a larger pond. When something clogged the drain, Showalter shinnied 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 Layman 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 Christina, 9, and Shayla, 11, and farmhand Amous Stoltzfus, 24.
The Showalters' two surviving daughters were being cared for by family members.
On Tuesday, a cousin of Scott Showalter's questioned whether runoff from a pile of brewer's grain had accelerated the formation of the gas. Scott Showalter had been using the grain to feed his cattle.
"It rained, and some of it ran down into this holding pit, it fermented and made a toxic gas," said Bruce Good, who saw Showalter about once a week.
