Tree cutting accident

   / Tree cutting accident
  • Thread Starter
#152  
Update. Today was the funeral, and had a chance to speak to the wife and son. Saw pictures of the tree he was cutting. Tree main trunk snapped off at a angle while he was cutting the felling notch. Appears that the tree he was cutting was a dead ash about 12 inches in diameter that broke off about 15 feet in the air came down and hit him in the chest which knocked him over causing him to hit his head on another stump. So it is actually looking like even though he had a brain bleed the actually cause of death was a heart attack.

I am actually seeing emerald ash borer killed trees breaking off several feet above the ground about a year after being killed by the beetle. And we are not talking about small branches coming down, I mean trees 12-18 inches in diameter breaking in half 15-20 feet in the air on calm windless days.
 
   / Tree cutting accident #153  
RandyT said:
Update. Today was the funeral, and had a chance to speak to the wife and son. Saw pictures of the tree he was cutting. Tree broke off while he was cutting the felling notch. Appears that the tree he was cutting was a dead ash about 12 inches in diameter that broke off about 15 feet in the air came down and hit him in the chest which knocked him over causing him to hit his head on another stump. So it is actually looking like even though he had a brain bleed the actually cause of death was a heart attack.

I am actually seeing emerald ash borer killed trees breaking off several feet above the ground about a year after being killed by the beetle. And we are not talking about small branches coming down, I mean trees 12-18 inches in diameter breaking in half 15-20 feet in the air on calm windless days.
Click to expand...
Ya, those long dead, weak trees kill sawyers. When in school they talked about trying to identify them and there risk of felling them.
 
   / Tree cutting accident #154  
Communities that delt with EAB told others....do not wait for the trees to fully die. ANY indication of EAB means you cut the tree ASAP. Those dead Ash trees are so dangerous to work with.
 
   / Tree cutting accident #155  
Recently had a friend in tree service that had one of his guys struck by an Ash top. They had a line in one of the leaders and when his helper put tension on it with chipper winch it broke out and broke the sawyers leg. Very experienced guy.
 
   / Tree cutting accident #156  
The Dead Ash I have left are either small, or huge but in the woods.
The small ones I will rope. They split at weird angles all the time and drop.
Almost got pegged while on the tractor. Whole areas of my trails are off limits until I can rope them down, from far, far away.
Even the ones that looked a bit alive would kick out branches and sometimes split.

I call the splits toothpicks as you can see the point 10-30' up where they split off in the woods.

Sad to hear about all this, why I stopped cutting them when they started dropping branches. Too late for that now.
 
   / Tree cutting accident #157  
Having been in an industry where safety rules were written in someone's blood , I tried to follow them as habit, I still wear safety glasses everyday even though I am retired because I know I only have one pair of eyes, and while I have never wore chaps while running a chainsaw and have never so much as scratched myself after having run one for probably many hundreds of hours, but I will probably start as I am getting older and I work by myself and have probably been lucky through the years. I am always amazed at simple things like Lock Out Tag Out are overlooked and seem to always cost someone a life or limb. A couple of years back at a local sawmill one of the sawyers shut down the saw to work on it, didn't use LOTO and in a few minutes one of his co-workers came along and fired it up and he lost one of his hands, a $10 lock and a 50 cent Do Not Operate Tag would have prevented it from happening, being educated on these rules should be #1 priority to anyone who is in charge of an operation.
 
   / Tree cutting accident #159  
ArlyA said:
EAB?
Click to expand...
Emerald Ash Borer. Brought into the Great Lakes region from China, been spreading out from there the last 15 years.

ruffdog said:
Communities that delt with EAB told others....do not wait for the trees to fully die. ANY indication of EAB means you cut the tree ASAP. Those dead Ash trees are so dangerous to work with.
Click to expand...
That's exaggerating the point a bit, but yeah... EAB-killed trees do get brittle and unpredictable with time. I've been felling them quite regularly, the last ten years. Many in the 40" - 48" DBH range, on the property where I happen to do most of my cutting.
 
   / Tree cutting accident #160  
WinterDeere said:
Emerald Ash Borer. Brought into the Great Lakes region from China, been spreading out from there the last 15 years.


That's exaggerating the point a bit, but yeah... EAB-killed trees do get brittle and unpredictable with time. I've been felling them quite regularly, the last ten years. Many in the 40" - 48" DBH range, on the property where I happen to do most of my cutting.
Click to expand...
Why didn't they just give the elms a vaccine and put masks on them? Too soon?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
 

Footer Links 1

Top