While the Portage County Coroner’s office hasn’t had the necessary time to isolate exactly which poisonous gas was to blame, the tragic death of a local farmer – and 16 of his cattle – Monday, Aug. 15, was due to a “perfect storm” of conditions that trapped gasses in a high enough concentration to be fatal while he was agitating (mixing) his farm’s manure pit.

In similar cases, most farmers who suffered medical emergencies or death while working with manure were working in enclosed spaces with not enough ventilation. However, in the case of Michael Biadasz, 29, town of Buena Vista, the manure pit was outdoors.

“We’re still trying to determine what gas was involved. There’s a number of potentials, but basically what happened was Mr. Biadasz was agitating a very large open-air manure pit, and he was agitating it to prepare it to be pumped into trucks to be hauled out. The agitation process breaks the scum on top of the manure ‘pond,’ if you will, and that process released the gases that are associated with manure pits,” said Portage County Coroner Scott Rifleman.

“That’s what we’re trying to determine, exactly what gas or number of gases are involved. He was overcome along with 16 head of cattle that were in the immediate vicinity. They also died during the process,” Rifleman said.

“The concerning fact here is the fact that it was an open-air pit,” he said. “There’s well-documented cases nationally of situations where farmers get in trouble with closed- or confined spaces issues – enclosed cisterns, enclosed manure pits, enclosed septic systems, things like that – but this is very rare because of its open-air nature.

“We’re still trying to determine exactly how the ‘perfect storm’ occurred – that’s what we’re kind of calling it, because really it was the perfect storm of weather, lack of wind creating a lack of air movement, that caused these gases to accumulate as they did,” he said.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison Agricultural and Animal Sciences Department has gotten involved with the case to lend its expertise as well as gather information on how something so bizarre could happen to help protect future farmers from running into the same accident.

“(With) a couple of forensic pathologists and forensic toxicologists, we’re all trying to pull together the science behind all of this, but that’s basically what happened. The lack of air movement and on that particular morning the air was extremely heavy with fog and dew,” Rifleman said.

“We also had an upper air inversion where the temperatures at 1,000 to 1,300 feet were warmer than the air at ground level and just created this ‘perfect storm’ and the gases (were trapped at ground level),” he said.

Rifleman said he and his team will notify the press when they are able to determine exactly what happened to keep the public informed, which may take three or more weeks given the time lab testing requires, but he had a few words of caution to farmers who deal with toxic gases.

“At this moment, (have) caution and be aware of non-moving air and low-level manure pits until we find out what gases were involved. Most gases that would be involved are going to be heavier than air from what I’ve been discovering and reading,” he said. “There must have been a tremendous amount of these low-level gases expelled from this pit and created this blanket of gaseous, non-oxygenated air.”

He said his best advice to farmers now is to be mindful of wind (or lack thereof), fog, dew points and temperatures when working around manure pits.

“But I’m just shooting off the hip here, until we pull it all together it’s hard to say exactly what farmers should be watching for,” he said.

When the official report is released, the Portage County Gazette will publish a follow up story.

A memorial in Biadasz’s name will be established for a Farm Safety Program for future farmers at a later date. Pending its creation, the details will be featured in the Gazette’s followup story.