Community comes together for farming family rocked by loss

CTV Calgary: Support for Eckville family Bill Fortier reports from the Central Alberta farming community that continues to mourn the loss of three young sisters

Residents in a small central Alberta community are coming together to do all they can for a family who lost three daughters in a tragic farming accident.

Dozens of people were gathered at the church in the Hamlet of Withrow, near Eckville, AB, on Wednesday night to learn more about how they could help the Bott family and offer their support in their time of grief.

On Tuesday, at about 6:15 p.m., police were called to the Bott family farm after reports of three children were buried by canola seed while they were playing.

Catie, 13, and twin daughters Dara and Jana, 11, were all submerged in seed inside a grain truck that was being loaded by a hopper.

Emergency crews attempted to revive two of the girls, but were unable to do so and they were declared dead at the scene. The third girl was flown to hospital in Edmonton where she later died.

It’s still unclear how the incident took place, but that’s not stopping residents from stepping up to help the family wracked by grief.

They’ve volunteered their time and equipment to finish the work on the Bott’s farm.

Joey Gustavson is a neighbour of the Botts and started organizing a group to help them bring in their crops as soon as he heard the news.

“We want to let Roger and Bonita know that everybody in the community cares,” said Gustavson. “Community comes together as a whole and everybody just gets together to help everybody when tragedy happens.”

Nine combine, ten trucks, and dozens of workers were all ready to help out there on Wednesday morning and the harvest, expected to take two days, was completed in just hours.

Other residents brought food out to the field and just spent time with the family, remembering their girls.

Catie, the eldest daughter, ran Withrow Church’s Operation Christmas Child, while Dara and Jana helped with the church’s boot camp.

“Raising these children in a farm environment was a wonderful, beautiful thing and the health of the family was obvious. Yeah, so they loved doing what they did,” said Brian Allan, pastor at the Withrow Church.

A trust fund has been established at the Eckville Credit Union at 5002 50 Street Eckville, Alberta and cheques should be made out to the Bott family in trust.

A Go Fund Me campaign has also been started to help support the family. You can learn more about it by clicking here.

Eckville is about two hours north of Calgary.

In Canada, there are about 104 farm fatalities per year. There have been just over 300 fatalities in Alberta between 1997 and 2003, with 61 of those involving victims under the age of 18.

Farm machinery accounts for almost three quarters of those fatalities.