Little Girl Buried Under Ears of Corn

AHRENS, SQUIRE, BURNSON

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes
Date: 8/13/2016 at 19:33:26

The Grinnell (IA) Herald-Register
Nov. 4, 1943

LITTLE GIRL
BURIED UNDER
EARS OF CORN

500 Bushels Descend on
8-Year-Old Ada Marie Ahrens

Three persons figured in what might well have been a fatal accident at the Ahrens Hybrid Seed Corn plant last Saturday.

Principal victim of the near fatality was Ada Marie Ahrens, 8-yar-old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Emmett Ahrens, 515 Fourth Ave.

The child was just leaving the second building when the floor above her gave way and an estimated 500 bushels of ear corn, recently unloaded from two trucks and waiting to go through the sorting belt fell down upon her. Two men, Walter Squire and Iver Burnson, were on the floor above and escaped injury only by grasping and hanging from the rafters. They climbed down and held up the roof while a crowd of some 15 persons gathered and chopped a hole in the west end of the building and shoveled out the corn, which was the only way to reach the little girl.

EMERGES UNHARMED

It took about 15 minutes--which, of course, seemed like hours for the workers to extricate the child. The men kept talking to her and she answered them, thus enabling them to locate her position and speed up the rescue work.

Ada emerged unharmed, except for not very serious bruises about the head and one ankle. She owes her seemingly miraculous escape to the fact that she was between a stairway and a truck, which stood almost directly below the cave-in part of the floor.

No one can account for the caving in of the floor, which was very well braced.