# Personal story of a friend's serious felling accident (IL, about '99)



## Positrack (Jan 14, 2010)

This isn't exactly a recent event (about 10 years ago) so I hope it's okay here. Still, I thought I'd share it because it was the scariest thing I've ever seen working with trees and it changed my attitude on tree safety overnight.

Me and a good buddy of mine got a job together culling dead and undesirable trees for a local farmer with a bunch of timber property. We were only a year or two out of high school, we were both pretty inexperienced, and the learning curve was pretty steep as we were totally unsupervised. We were working a hillside one day; I was cutting brush and my buddy was dropping a big dead elm (IIRC) on a particularly steep spot. He was trying to drop it uphill so we could easily pull it downhill with the tractor and buck it up where there was more space and flatter ground. It was not a very straight trunk, and was hollow and pretty rotten, but it LOOKED like it would cooperate with the uphill drop. When he was ready to drop it, he got my attention and I killed the brush cutter to watch (at a distance). He finished his backcut, and it started over. It started over bad, about 90* from where he wanted it, but it still looked okay. Then, just as it was going over, the limbs on one side caught some other limbs from a neighboring tree (it was a real dense, snaggy mess in the area), and the trunk twisted on the stump. All at once what little bit of hinge the hollow trunk allowed disintegrated, it rotated/slid off the stump, and ended up coming back, falling downhill. When my buddy had seen it start to fall bad, he had backed up (down the hill) a fair distance. When it started to twist and the hinge broke, he dropped the saw and started sprinting downhill. I was perfectly safe where I was, but I could see the whole thing and it wasn't good; the tree was falling right toward him and he was running straight away from it. I screamed at him to run to the side, but in the stress of the moment, he just kept running straight. When the tree fell, one of the very top branches caught him in the head and hammered him into the ground. He was maybe 6' from having it miss him completely. I ran down to where he was laying. He was conscious and rolling around (writhing would probably be a better term) but clearly in bad shape. After a second or two trying to talk to him, I decided there was clearly nothing I could do for him, and jumped in the truck to go call the ambulance (neither of us had cell phones back then).

He ended up with a severe cranial fracture and a brain hemorrhage, and had to be taken from our local hospital to a more major one by helicopter. The doctor told him if he'd laid there on the ground for 10 more minutes he might have had permanent injuries or possibly might not have made it due to the internal bleeding and pressure on his brain (as I understand it). As it was, he eventually made out okay (though he'll never "play football" again on Dr.'s orders), but it took him a while and he still has a flat spot on his head. As hard as that branch hit him, he got off lucky in my opinion. I honestly thought he was dead when I saw him get just POUNDED into the ground by that tree. I think his head beat his feet to the ground (seriously). It's as clear in my mind today as it was when it happened. We can joke about it today (though his wife, then girlfriend, still goes into fits whenever he picks up a chainsaw), but it sure was no joke at the time. It's something I'll never forget, and it gave me a whole new respect for trees and the people who do this kind of work for a living.


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## wigglesworth (Jan 14, 2010)

Thanks for sharing that. Im glad your friend pulled thru. I did a lot of stupid, stupid thing's when I was younger that should had ended my time here on earth most indefinetly. You know what they say, hindsight is 20/20. Was your friend wearing a hard hat?


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## Positrack (Jan 14, 2010)

wigglesworth said:


> Was your friend wearing a hard hat?



No, I'm ashamed to say, neither of us did. We didn't have PPE of any kind. Heck, he'd wear shorts most days. I always wore jeans but I doubt a chainsaw would tell the difference. Stupid, stupid... I don't know how much a hard hat would have helped, but I think it might have made a big difference. The branch that hit him wasn't that big (maybe 2" in dia.) but it was at the very top of the tree and moving at a terrific speed by the time it got to the ground.


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## wigglesworth (Jan 14, 2010)

Positrack said:


> No, I'm ashamed to say, neither of us did. We didn't have PPE of any kind. Heck, he'd wear shorts most days. I always wore jeans but I doubt a chainsaw would tell the difference. Stupid, stupid... I don't know how much a hard hat would have helped, but I think it might have made a big difference. The branch that hit him wasn't that big (maybe 2" in dia.) but it was at the very top of the tree and moving at a terrific speed by the time it got to the ground.



A little PPE might have went a long way in his case. It don't take much of a twig falling from 50' or so to make a big dent in your noggin.


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## gwiley (Jan 14, 2010)

If you doubt the effectiveness of a hardhat, here is a little experiment you can try:

supplies:
1 baseball bat or similar stick
2 cantelopes
1 hard hat

1. Place cantelope on ground
2. Smash cantelope with bat
3. Observe

4. Place cantelope on groung
5. Place Hardhat on cantelope
6. Smash hardhat
7. observe

8. Clean stuff up quickly before your SO sees the mess.


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## rarefish383 (Jan 14, 2010)

Thanks for sharing that with us, and I'm happy to hear the outcome. I was lucky that I grew up 4th generation in the tree care industry. I was way ahead of the curve when it comes to safety. That being said, I've still had close calls with hollow, rotten, or wind blown trees. My first bit of advice is to always use a tag line. Even if the tree is leaning into the fall. I know pro loggers don't do that, but a lot of them get hurt too. If you're tied off as high as you can get and anchored to another tree, trailer hitch, whatever, the tag line will at least slow down the catastrophy, maybe giving you a few more seconds to react and escape, Joe.


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## TimberMan (Jan 17, 2010)

I had a dead black cherry do that to me once. There was a lot of rot, but I had plenty of room to drop it so I just made my cuts and let her rip. I failed to notice the big creeper vines tying my tree's canopy to the others nearby, and that caused the tree to twist on the stump and the butt broke loose and shot straight backwards. Took my 460 right out of my hand, and I was standing about 8 to 10 feet behind and a little to the side of the stump. I'll never forget that lesson.


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## Positrack (Jan 18, 2010)

rarefish383 said:


> My first bit of advice is to always use a tag line. Even if the tree is leaning into the fall. I know pro loggers don't do that, but a lot of them get hurt too. If you're tied off as high as you can get and anchored to another tree, trailer hitch, whatever, the tag line will at least slow down the catastrophy, maybe giving you a few more seconds to react and escape, Joe.



Definitely. That's one of the techniques I adopted following this incident. If there is any question to the lean, condition, or surroundings of the tree, I'll get a log chain around it as high as I can and hook it to the 12,000 lb. recovery winch on my pickup. I know that's a little unusual (most would use rope of some sort rather than chain), but I've got 2 20' and 2 30' G70 transport chains plus 125' of wire rope on the winch so I can get 220' out if need be (gotta leave a few feet for the last few wraps on the drum). Plus, the chain won't care if a tree falls on it. I've talked to plenty of people who poo-poo this idea and say you should be able to just wedge it over, but if the tree is rotten and/or hollow, there might just not be enough material to make a satisfactory hinge (as in the case above). Pros may do it differently and people can say what they want, I'll take a little added security.


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## clearance (Jan 18, 2010)

This hasn't been said, but is in the original story, do not fall uphill. Fall sideways.


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## Burvol (Jan 18, 2010)

Not his time to go. I hate to admit it, but I have been thumped really hard a few times, once fairly serious. Hardhats will help big time. Just like chaps...they will not save your ass from the "Big One" but they will deflect and absorb a lot of lesser blows. Fatal ones that are now serious, but non-fatal.


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## outofmytree (Jan 21, 2010)

Burvol said:


> Not his time to go. I hate to admit it, but I have been thumped really hard a few times, once fairly serious. Hardhats will help big time. Just like chaps...they will not save your ass from the "Big One" but they will deflect and absorb a lot of lesser blows. Fatal ones that are now serious, but non-fatal.



:agree2:

PPE isnt for sissies. PPE is for people who want to go home in one piece everyday. I do get a laugh out of guys who post that they don't wear hardhats or chaps because they are too hot or too restrictive. Now that is a sissy!


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## ChiHD (Jan 21, 2010)

gwiley said:


> If you doubt the effectiveness of a hardhat, here is a little experiment you can try:
> 
> supplies:
> 1 baseball bat or similar stick
> ...



That is gold. we will be doing this at our safety meeting next Monday morning. Thanks


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## constantine (Jan 24, 2010)

outofmytree said:


> :agree2:
> 
> PPE isnt for sissies. PPE is for people who want to go home in one piece everyday. I do get a laugh out of guys who post that they don't wear hardhats or chaps because they are too hot or too restrictive. Now that is a sissy!



You got that right. If you are doing something which can get you hurt or killed, you do everything you can to stack the deck in your favor. You leave as little as possible to chance. You don't care if it takes extra time and money - you just do it. That's what being a professional is all about.


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## BlueRidgeMark (Jan 24, 2010)

outofmytree said:


> :agree2:
> 
> PPE isnt for sissies. PPE is for people who want to go home in one piece everyday.




Yep. Anybody who thinks PPE is for sissies is just plain stupid.


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## Oldtimer (Feb 20, 2010)

Running from a tree in panic is always a bad idea. 99 times out of 100, you can just stay near the butt and walk around it to avoid the falling tree.
Panic is the real enemy. You can do a LOT of thinking and planning in 3/4 of a second. The tree needs 5-10 seconds to do it's thing. Use the time it takes to think.

Just the other day, I was chopping for a friend, good sized pine.
I was waiting for him to turn around and back up to pick up a twitch...
He just barely bumped a dead pine, about 8" on the butt, maybe 30 feet tall...
Sure enough, it came down, right at me. I saw it coming out of the corner of my eye. Instead of trying to run, I dove backwards onto my back. It missed me by about 2'. If I had tried to run out from under it, it would have got me.
I could not have run any other way but the direction it was falling.
Mind you, this was in about 16" of granular snow.

Working in the woods, you have to be ready to move instantaneously, and move in the right direction. I have done this a few dozen times in the 20 years I have been in the woods. So far, a half second of thought has served me well. Think before you move.


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## gwiley (Feb 21, 2010)

Oldtimer said:


> Running from a tree in panic is always a bad idea. 99 times out of 100, you can just stay near the butt and walk around it to avoid the falling tree.
> Panic is the real enemy. You can do a LOT of thinking and planning in 3/4 of a second. The tree needs 5-10 seconds to do it's thing. Use the time it takes to think.



Bear in mind that most of the deaths from tree felling occur within 10' of the stump. Trunks kicking back or getting wrenched in odd directions when the crown tangles on the way down can make for unpredictable movement in the butt. The best thing to do is to make a hasty retreat from the vicinity of the stump without ever turning your back on the tree.

From my own experience felling in the dense virginia woods I can say that it is very difficult to fully clear the lay for the crown when you are selective harvesting and that often results in crazy swings, kick back (from the tree) - I choose to clear 2 escape paths and use one of them the instant I see the tree start to go.


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## RVALUE (Feb 21, 2010)

And dead / sick trees are many times worse, or more dangerous. Just recently I was working with a person who would tell you he is fairly experienced, he dropped a dead elm, an easy drop, but he stood close as it went, and a 500 pound limb caught the tree _behind_ him and dropped itself right _besides_ him. Since this was the easiest tree of the day, almost in the wide open, he was showing off (?) and let his guard down. No penalty, but a good lesson.

I can tell you from personal experience that head and back injuries are serious. And permament.


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## outofmytree (Feb 21, 2010)

Two good replies above this post.

Our standards require an escape path cleared before felling at 135 degrees to the direction of predicted fall. 2 paths are a good idea especially if you make a mistake with the scarf and the direction of fall is a little different to plan A. Whatever the case, do not stay next to the butt when it starts to move. Even if the odds are 1/1000 that it kicks out you just don't want to be there when it does.


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## RVALUE (Feb 21, 2010)

outofmytree said:


> Two good replies above this post.
> 
> Our standards require an escape path cleared before felling at 135 degrees to the direction of predicted fall. 2 paths are a good idea especially if you make a mistake with the scarf and the direction of fall is a little different to plan A. Whatever the case, do not stay next to the butt when it starts to move. Even if the odds are 1/1000 that it kicks out you just don't want to be there when it does.



Exactly, but youth and inexperience let their guards down, when it looks REAL easy. Those dead ones are the worse. I have seen limbs 'give up' and drop as the tree moves away from them. Then people wonder why it costs so much to drop 'em.

Good Post.


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## outofmytree (Feb 21, 2010)

RVALUE said:


> Exactly, but youth and inexperience let their guards down, when it looks REAL easy. Those dead ones are the worse. I have seen limbs 'give up' and drop as the tree moves away from them. Then people wonder why it costs so much to drop 'em.
> 
> Good Post.



Over here a good kevlar helmet will set you back $250 Aus. So you can add that to the price straight away!


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## Oldtimer (Feb 21, 2010)

gwiley said:


> Bear in mind that most of the deaths from tree felling occur within 10' of the stump. Trunks kicking back or getting wrenched in odd directions when the crown tangles on the way down can make for unpredictable movement in the butt. The best thing to do is to make a hasty retreat from the vicinity of the stump without ever turning your back on the tree.
> 
> From my own experience felling in the dense virginia woods I can say that it is very difficult to fully clear the lay for the crown when you are selective harvesting and that often results in crazy swings, kick back (from the tree) - I choose to clear 2 escape paths and use one of them the instant I see the tree start to go.



Same here. I was referring to a tree doing a completely unexpected movement and running in terror. I usually move 8-10 feet off to the safest side and watch carefully, looking up too. Death from above is the danger after the tree is in a committed fall.


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## Positrack (Feb 21, 2010)

All good points, and I appreciate all the input and constructive criticism. It is true that other than the tree falling badly, the main cause of this was simply panic. When the tree started over in my buddy's direction, he didn't evaluate the situation, he just reacted instinctively (RUN!). He could have easily out run the tree if he had gone sideways, but that's easy for me to say standing a hundred yards up the ravine watching him. Still, it was so frustrating because I could see exactly what was going to happen but I couldn't do a thing about it. He knows and readily admits he just panicked and if he had just thought about it for a split second before reacting, the outcome could have been much different. It reminds me of when people lock their brakes on snow. It's not gonna help one bit if you need to steer around something, but it sure can be hard to force yourself not to do it in an emergency. Live and learn I guess (if you're lucky).

He could have set a sprinting world record though if somebody had been there with a stopwatch. He's a pretty husky fella (lineman in HS) and usually has only two gears: low and double low, but he was wide open in overdrive that day!


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## RVALUE (Feb 21, 2010)

Positrack said:


> All good points, and I appreciate all the input and constructive criticism. It is true that other than the tree falling badly, the main cause of this was simply panic. When the tree started over in my buddy's direction, he didn't evaluate the situation, he just reacted instinctively (RUN!). He could have easily out run the tree if he had gone sideways, but that's easy for me to say standing a hundred yards up the ravine watching him. Still, it was so frustrating because I could see exactly what was going to happen but I couldn't do a thing about it. He knows and readily admits he just panicked and if he had just thought about it for a split second before reacting, the outcome could have been much different. It reminds me of when people lock their brakes on snow. It's not gonna help one bit if you need to steer around something, but it sure can be hard to force yourself not to do it in an emergency. Live and learn I guess (if you're lucky).
> 
> He could have set a sprinting world record though if somebody had been there with a stopwatch. He's a pretty husky fella (lineman in HS) and usually has only two gears: low and double low, but he was wide open in overdrive that day!



I have found that there are two types of people. Those prone to panic, and those who tend to not panic. Lots of mishaps happen when a person panics.


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## B-Edwards (Feb 26, 2010)

A former foreman of mine got the same kind of hit. He had just cut a rock hard dead oak and it lodged in another tree. The other climber and myself were standing back as he was chunking it from the bottom. We both saw that he was making a mistake but he was the foreman and it was too late. As he made the last cut and pushed the bottom of the tree knuckled back and it began to fall and he was running directly in the path. It hit him square on top of the head driving him to the ground. The only thing I think that saved him was some large rock 2-3 feet tall caught the tree so it didnt follow him all the way to the ground. He was wearing a hard hat but it still hit him hard enough to split his head. He works for the power company now and seems to be doing fine but told me he has nerve damage. We picked on him and ask if he tried to stay in the shadow while he was running. Unreal how easy you can die doing this work. Even if you are experienced. He had been doing tree work for years and was good at . Seems everyone is capable of being stupid now and then or just making a simple but costly mistake.


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## Metals406 (Feb 26, 2010)

A friend of mine, Sam, almost died last Saturday. He's an experienced woodsman, but that only takes you so far.

He was a million miles from nowhere cutting cord-wood with a buddy. They were looking for pumpkins, and found a nice 2.5 cord DF. The fir was on the cut-slope side of the road (uphill), and several hundred yards from the road.

Sam was standing on the road (well clear of the falling tree) while his buddy dropped it. The fir came down, and made a run (this is line-ground steep). Before Sam could react to the direction of the fir, it slammed into the road several feet beside him. 

A 40' chunk of the top flew up and hit him dead square in the forehead. It threw him over the fill-slope side down into a creek bottom (50'-60' away from where he was initially standing). His buddy witnessed the ordeal and ran down to the road.

The tree had to get cut out of the road to get to help, so that took his friend a few minutes; Sam still lying unconscious in the creek bottom. Sam's friend jumped in the truck to move it closer to where Sam had been thrown. He looked over on the seat and saw Sam laying there. Somehow he had made his way to the truck while the tree was being cut out of the road. 

It was 20 miles to the nearest phone, and another 45 miles to the nearest hospital. Sam went in and out of consciousness until they reach the Inn where a Life-Flight was called in.

Sam is lucky. . . He received a nasty gash on his forehead, 27 hairline fractures of his skull (think Humpty-Dumpty), but no swelling, bleeding, or the like. He was released from the hospital the following day. He's supposed to take it easy for the next 2 months while the bone tries to join again.

How he didn't have more serious head trauma (yeah, like 27 fractures isn't enough) I'll never know. He was being watched after from above is all I can think?

His son goes to kindergarten with my youngest boy. . . I'm glad Sam's son still has a dad.

Be safe!


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## outofmytree (Feb 28, 2010)

Give my regards to Sam. Glad he made it out of there alive.


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## Metals406 (Feb 28, 2010)

outofmytree said:


> Give my regards to Sam. Glad he made it out of there alive.


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## silverzuk (Mar 1, 2010)

I have had vines really mess things up. I was young and also facing a steep learning curve.
One tree was in a tangle of vines. I had cut smaller trees to pull the vines down the hill, which will pull on the bigger tree. The smaller trees (4" to 6") were cut clean and leaning with the vines keeping them from falling.
I had cut loose all I could on the up hill side so the vines wouldn't drag anything down on top of me. 
The tree had a good lean down hill, and I was confident I had done enough to make it go.

I cut it loose, and it started to go. The first indicator was that I had to cut through most of the hinge before it started to go. I stepped back and was watching. The tree started to go, and as the vines tightened in a tree top across the hill, I figured it would pull through.

I was wrong, the tree spun, pulled off the stump, and sent the butt flying back toward me. As it went by I pushed off and jumped into a hole (which I was standing beside for that reason).

The tree I cut was suspended by the vines in the top of another tree. It fell over enough to break the hinge and jump it back beside the stump. When every thing settled, the end of the tree was about 15' uphill and behind the stump it just came from.

That one really opened my eyes about vines. Particularly the strength of a bunch of little ones about as big around as your finger.


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