death by tree branch

[mahlers]

I had a big branch (about five inches in diameter at the base and about 12 feet long) come down from about 30 feet up a pine tree and spear me almost smack in the middle of my head. It ripped the scalp from the entire back half of my head and fractured my skull really good.

Believe it or not, I didn't lose consciousness, and got myself to the local hospital without going into shock. They stapled me back together, and as far as I know, I'm OK... I actually went to work the very next day (high as a kite on painkillers). Nowadays, I wear a hard hat when working around trees...

I was pretty mad at the emergency room, though - they made me wait for 45 minutes as they admitted some kid with a sprained thumb before me. I guess they thought that all head wounds bleed really bad and I couldn't be that hurt if I was able to drive myself in. When the ER doctor finally saw me, he absolutely flipped out and I could hear him talking in the background in astonishment about how that was the worst head injury he'd seen, and I was acting like it was no big deal - let alone still being alive.

[jcims]

Just cut a ~50' tree yesterday, the back cut was a smidge low on the far side and caused it to spin a little, catching another (standing dead) tree on the way down. The force of the felled tree sort of 'cocked' the dead tree back away from me and it hung up. I cut a few strands of the hinge, which let the tree roll back off of the dead one it was hung up on, but when it did so that dead tree *snapped* back at me hard. If any of those top limbs were loose (either naturally or from being struck by the tree) it could have *easily* made it to me, if not twice past me.

Sometimes you learn just as much from the could-have-beens.


Edit: OSHA has a pretty nice site for info on cutting trees: Logging eTool: Mainpage

[psj12]

A little off target, but a worker was just killed in Maryland by a tree branch. He fell off it into the chipper.