Yet another family tragedy - Farming family die in slurry pit in Northern Ireland

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Yet another horrific and devasting family beavement. Sad to see the male side of the family wiped out.www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2203871/Nevin-Spence-death-Rugby-player-died-slurry-pit-trying-save-father.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

This event has left me a emotional wreck (I married into a farming family) and feel so much compassion for the mum and family and wonder how on earth they will recover from this. Reading that they were such a devoted christian family and the parents were blessed with gorgeous and sucessful children....life seemed so good for them and just a second decision to enter a slurry pit and its over. Not just losing one member of the family but your best friend and two strapping sons. I'm guessing that the eldest boy worked as a partner on the farm.

Then you think about the future of the farm as its probably been in the family for generations, the animals, the hard graft the father and son put into making it a sucessful business - its all so so devastating.

This is a facebook page where people can leave messages.www.facebook.com/#!/pages/RIP-nevin-spence/505170359512592

Makes you realise that life is so fragile.

awful. I still have a very real fear of slurry pits after a 'safety on the farm' film which we were shown quite a few times as children at school in the 70's

Did it show school desk after school desk cleared away ? Four or five kids ? One died after they found a bottle of somehting and drank it, it being piosen?

If so that is the one they terrified showed us too, around the same time, late 70s I think. I still have a hard time walking onto a farm even today. Just feels so damn menecing.

I made dh fill the sheep dip in. It had a layer of grass and reeds growing over it but a good five feet of water underneath.

Those farm safety films in the 70's were terrifying. There are so many dangers on a farmyard plus distractions and lots of things all happening at once.

Suocera that's the one. About 5 children all died on a farm in various ways. It would have been the late 70's. One had a gate fall on him and another eletrocuted himself. The slurry pit was by far the worst though

We have a dis-used soakaway in our garden and I break out in a cold sweat everytime on of the children are near the cover. Gentle how did you fill your sheep dip in? I want to do this with our soakaway but imagine it would take masses of concrete.

We filled it with earth and gravel. It takes quite a lot.
It was covered with corrugated iron until the ground settled and a fence round the area.

see we have started to fill our soak away up with earth and stones and now it is a stinky bog which would be much worse for the children to fall into than just water as before. I think we are going to ask our builder to seal it off permanently. We also have a tight tank which gives me the heebie geebies

FunnysInLaJardin

Could you not make it a small "flower hill", so instead of filling to the level of the surrouding ground you extend the actual boundries of the soggy area by same a meter in all directions and biuld it up with earth, and then plant shrubs/small trees etc on it after it's had time to settle ?

The slurry pit was by far the worst though

I read this and realised how powerful the mind can be at not seeing what it doesn't want to see. I remember that one as a child drowning in grains.

Hence my utter terror of rice/corn silos.

I didn't want to see slurry, so I replaced it with something slightly
less horrific.

It would seem there is a generation of children who are inclined to get anxious even passing by a farm thanks to that film.

DS is 12, but when we go to the mozzarella farm his new found independance is curtailed as I place a cast iron grip on his bicep, even in the shop.People including my husband think I'm mad, but it's bigger than me. It's a profound fear I just can't shake.

I don't doubt that the family were aware of the dangers, but all it takes is that split second of an understandable and uncontrollable impulse to save a pet or a person and a massive tradegy happens. Those poor people. So much loss to take in, in one fell swoop.