Richard Schertz was glad of one thing Wednesday morning.

"I'm glad I wasn't out in the corn on the combine," he said.

Shortly after 9 a.m. Wednesday, a rotating blade on a wind turbine at Schertz's farm broke off, plunging to the earth in a cornfield about 150 feet west of the turbine.

The noise startled Schertz, who lives within sight of the turbine, near the intersection of 1100 North Avenue and 1100 East Street, just southeast of Buda.

"I heard a crash, crash, bang," he said. "I didn't know what it was, and I thought it was thunder."

Schertz said he was told about two weeks ago that the blades would be replaced on the turbine in November or December, after he harvested the corn from the surrounding field.

The turbine is part of the four-turbine AgriWind LLC wind farm, which was developed by Matt Kauffman, his brother Todd Sears, and John Deere Wind Energy. Schertz said the turbine with the broken blade had been in place for a little more than a year.

Schertz said that it wasn't the only turbine with a problem and pointed to another turbine nearby.

"This one has a cracked blade, and it hasn't run all summer," he said.

Two other nearby turbines were turned off shortly after the incident.

Questions to AgriWind were referred to Suzlon Wind Energy Corp., and a Suzlon spokesperson said there was not much information available at this time.

The spokesperson said the investigation into this turbine had just started, but the company was in the middle of a blade retrofit program across the United States to correct an "unfortunate" design issue in the first generation of this blade.

On March 3, Suzlon issued a press release announcing the retrofit program to resolve blade cracking issues discovered during the operations of some of its S-88 turbines in the United States. The retrofit program involves the structural strengthening of 1,251 (417 sets) blades on S-88 (2.1 MW) turbines.

The spokesperson said that if a blade has a crack, it comes down and is replaced with a new blade. Blades without cracks are strengthened with fiberglass.

The blade on this turbine broke off near the hub, from the stem, the same place cracks in other blades have been discovered. The spokesperson said this is Suzlon's only site in Illinois with this turbine.

The spokesperson said the investigation would be thorough.

"We take this matter very seriously," the spokesperson said. "Safety comes first."