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Daily special at the Spring Hill cafe was saving a life

Photo courtesy of Tammy Pung

When Steve Pung was nearly buried alive in a corn bin Tuesday near Spring Hill, his dad called the town cafe for help, then 911.

A Spring Hill bar and grill did what cell phones and 911 couldn't: Rustle a rescue of a farmer stuck in a corn bin.

By CURT BROWN, Star Tribune

Last update: October 22, 2009 - 10:25 PM

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So much for cell phones and 911. There are still spots in rural Minnesota where people call the nearest cafe for help when a farmer's life is on the line.

Steve Pung had climbed into the 30-foot-high steel corn bin on his family's farm 100 miles west of the Twin Cities near Spring Hill. That's when the finicky auger Pung planned to fix started whirring below him and the corn started shifting and piling up around him. Fast.

Within 20 seconds Tuesday, the shelled corn rose from his knees to his navel. But Pung, 39, didn't panic. Not yet.

"My left arm was under the corn, but I could still reach my cell phone on my belt with my right arm," he said. "So I called my dad's cell phone."

His father, Daniel Pung, was just outside the 26-foot-wide round bin, but the loud auger motors drowned out his son's hollers.

"The cell phone rang three times and then said: No service," Daniel said. "Ain't too many cell phones that work when you're surrounded by corn and steel."

As the corn climbed above his shoulders, then tickled the back of his ears and the bottom of his lip, Steve figured: "This was it. I was done."

But as his dad walked 50 feet toward another bin and away from the loud motors, he could hear his son screaming to turn off the auger. Another few seconds, both father and son agree, and Steve likely would have suffocated.

When his father climbed a ladder and looked down into the bin, all he could see was his son's camouflage cap and his nose sticking out. Arching his neck, Steve heard his dad yell: "Where are you?"

"Under my hat," he responded.

Suspended in shifting corn some two feet off the ground, Steve calmly told his father to fetch a garden hose and some rope. If the corn covered him completely, his father was ready to dive in and get the hose to his son's mouth so he could keep breathing.

"I didn't know if I had three seconds or three minutes," Steve said.

It was 1:20 p.m. and Steve had just eaten some pork sandwiches from the Extra Inning Bar and Grill a couple of miles east in Spring Hill. Steve told his dad to call the cafe and then call 911.

"I figured the cafe would be closest, so dial them and then dial 911," he said.

Bartender Amy Orbeck, 29, took the call: "His dad said to get all the guys in the bar and come out to the farm because Steve was stuck in the bin."

By then, only three women remained from the lunch crowd. They watched the place as Amy zipped to the farm, calling her husband and father along the way.

Amy ran to get the hose as neighbors opened a side door in the bin and started shoveling out the corn within five minutes. Just then, the volunteer rescue squad from Elrosa, Stearns County deputies and a Paynesville ambulance all zoomed in.

"When I got there and was blocked off by a helicopter, I almost fainted," said Tammy Pung, Steve's wife. "It's a miracle he made it."

It took 90 minutes, but the neighbors and rescue workers got Steve Pung out of the corn. He was back at work Thursday on his parents' farm -- the only job he's ever known.

"It's pretty good that, even in a small community, you can have help there in a minute or two," Steve said.

He said his life never flashed in front of him.

"There was no time for praying," he said.

His wife has undergone multiple intestinal surgeries this year and his father turned 62 on Sept. 11.

"When I thought this was it, I thought about how my wife was going to handle this, and I thought about how my dad's getting older and he won't be able to do all this work," Steve said.

"They would have had to figure it out because I figured I was done. Then all of a sudden, the auger stopped beneath me, and I thought I might have a chance."

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767