Wyatt Whitebread

It was easy to miss with all of the Sandy coverage, but an article by John M. Broder in Sunday's New York Times gives some of the wrenching details about teenage boys dying in grain bins. Broder begins with the story of Tommy Osier: STERLING, Mich. — Tommy Osier, 18, a popular but indifferent student, was still a year from graduating from high school, and that was no sure thing. Farm work paid him $7.40 an hour, taught him discipline and gave him new skills. He had begun talking about making a life in farming. But he hated the chore he drew on Memorial Day of last year, working inside the…

The next time you hear someone claim that worker safety regulations and OSHA hurt job growth and hinder small businesses, remind them about Haasbach, LLC. On July 28, 2010, two workers (Wyatt Whitebread, 14, and Alex Pacas, 19) were killed at a grain handling facility owned by Haasbach, when the young workers were engulfed in corn. The boys, along with several others, were hired to do dangerous work----breaking up corn in a million bushel grain bin----and had not been given the training or equipment to do it safely. Haasbach's owners failed to ensure that basic safety procedures were…