RUSSELL, KS – The bodies of two workers have been pulled from the grain after part of an elevator collapsed Thursday afternoon.

The collapse of the AgCo elevator happened just after 2 o'clock.

Two tubes -- silos of the elevator -- filled with grain, went down in what officials are calling a structural collapse.

Two elevator employees who were unloading a semitrailer were buried in the grain. Their bodies were recovered shortly before 5 p.m.

They are identified as Max Greve, 21, of Hays and Sean Banks, 19, of Russell.

Russell resident Vickie Tammen was standing across the street when the elevator collapsed and tells KSN, “It sounded like paper crumbling.”

Except for rescue workers, people are being kept back from the scene because of fear of another collapse.

“We want to stress that this is a structural failure; it is not an explosion,” said Russell County Sheriff John Fletcher. “We have not had any kind of an explosion. It just – the structure has failed at some point. We will not know how it’s failed or anything probably for – you’re looking at a few days until we can get the engineers in here to make sure we know exactly what happened.”

Source: KSN News