Got my foot stuck under a tree today

[Chainsaw_Maniac]

I'm limbing out trees for a logging company 2-4 days a week now adays. (I gotta have time left over for cutting firewood for sale, which is still my main business).

Anyway, the skidder was off to be welded yesterday and it wasn't supposed to be back until this afternoon. That's why the other loggers want to show up for work today. So I went over there anyway to limb out trees cuz I'd have the whole 600 acres of hardwood to myself without having to worry about anyone else skidding logs and falling trees in my area.

So here I am in the middle of nowhere somewhere in the middle of this huge forest cutting away and day dreaming. All of a sudden one of the trees I'm working on rolls over ever so slightly and I can't get my foot out from under it. I instantly stop my saw and grap the tree and try and lift or roll it off my foot while jerking my leg frantically. My foot is hurting like hell and lifing on the log makes it hurt a little bit less but I know that I will not be able to lift as strongly on the log as my streangth runs out so I let go of the log, which makes my foot hurt very badly and grap my saw and try and cut a 5 foot pole that I can use as a pry bar to lift up the log.

My foot hurts bad and it's going numb and I'm pretty frantic so the pole winds up about 3 feet long and about 3 inches thick and I get that under the tree and pry up with all my streangth and I barely magane to get my foot out.

Then I start limbing around, dancing kind of, and take my boot and my sock off. My foot is all black and blue and bruised. Then I examine my boot to see if that's damaged but it wasn't.

So the moral of the story is:

• Try and avoid logging/firewood cutting/ tree climbing (or whatever) by yourself. I thought I was safe cuz i wasn't even gonna fall any trees but I was wrong.
  
• Always let someone know where you are going and make sure they'll come looking for you if you don't show up from the bush when you're supposed to. I let someone know, but it would have been hours before they came for me, if ever.
  
• Where all your safty equipment. Everytime I talk about that stuff with loggers they hate wearing that stuff, but it's important to wear it. Usually they'll say something like "You might as well be wearing jeans and running shoes and no hard hat" and I sometimes agreed with them, but I'm starting to change my mind. 50% of the pro's I know are not wearing full equipment most of the time. Most wear steel toed boots (but not nessicarily chainsaw boots). Most wear the hard hat. Few wear the chaps/chainsaw proof pants unless they think they will get "caught" (by the boss or a ministry of labout guy). Some pro's wear no equipment at all.
  
  And you all know what 99% of homeowners and non-pro's wear......steel toed boots and hearing protection at best, and often not even that.
  
  Those chainsaw proof pants/chaps are probably the most hated of all safty equipment cuz they make you sweat like hell, and at the time of the accident I wasn't wearing them. From now on I'll wear all my stuff (probably). Without my chainsaw boots my foot could have been crushed and I never would have had room to get the lever between the groung and the log (the steel tow was holding it up).
  
• Cell phones are probably good. I don't have one yet.
  
• It doesn't matter how experinaced you are you can always get into an accident when you least expect it. I have 10 years experinece.

Basically if things had have been worse, say the log pinned my whole leg and not just the foot, or I had no have been able to lift the log with the lever, or I'd been unable to cut a lever with my saw.....

Then I could still be under that tree now, waiting for someone to find me. My foot could have had to have been amputated.

Three more quick things though before I write an essay and bore veryone to death...

1) Some one needs to invent a boot that protects the whole foot from impact. The only ones I've seen protect only 2 inces of toe with the steel toe. You all know that anything that ever falls on your foot with hurt you between your ankle and where the steel toe begins. lol.

2) I am so mentaly conditined never to ruin a good log (and also not to hit a rock with my chain) that it didn't occur to me until later that I could have used the chainsaw to cut the log in half right next to my foot (I don't know if it would have worked though).

3) My foot is doing ok. I wont go to the hospital, and I'll be logging again Monday. But with less day dreaming.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Ouch!

I've pinned my foot before, luckily the ground was way soft.

Frig the mill log, get it off you. You don't wanna go on the talk show circuit, like that guy that cut his arm off with a dull knife, and a pair of plyers.

Working alone demands extra-extra caution. It's good to hear nothing worse happened!

 

[treeman82]

I was working with some people at a building lot last weekend. We just had to drop a few trees and then leave. It was the guy I work for, the owner of the home who was running a 312 CAT, myself, and 1 other guy. We got 1 of the trees down which was loaded with vines. I went in to cut the tree in half for the excavator to pull out of there and bury. All of a sudden the tree starts coming at me. I screamed out to stop, and everything stopped. Vines, multiple trees down at one time, and a moderately experienced machine operator... all contributed.

 

[MasterBlaster]

Sorta relared...

During a launch on the USS Enterprise, one of the catapult crew allowed an F-14's main landing gear to roll over his hand as the bird set-up into final launch position.

I didn't know what was going on, I was dealing with my bird's launch, I just noticed a commotion going on at the waist-cats. I was on the bow-cats.

About 20 guys got on each wing and pushed it back. I didn't know what was going on until later.

The guy wasn't really that injured, despite having the wheel pin his hand to the steam catapult. We all wore gloves.

 

[SilverBlue]

Hermann come on down here and I'll teach you how to climb trees, it's much safer up there I would get that foot checked out though, you don't want more trouble, especially something like a blood clot messing you up.

 

[blue]

blood clots

these feckin things killed a friend of mine a good few years ago

he twisted his ankle walking down a ladder.didn't think much of it for a few day's then his ankle began to swell again till it was huge.he went to the doctor's who examined it and promptly got an ambulance to take him to hospital.my friend was addmitted for observation.

he died about 4 days later(still in hospital under obs.) when a blood clot that formed in the swelling moved and went straight to his brain on xmas day.


rip pat

 

[treeman45246]

1) Some one needs to invent a boot that protects the whole foot from impact. The only ones I've seen protect only 2 inces of toe with the steel toe. You all know that anything that ever falls on your foot with hurt you between your ankle and where the steel toe begins. lol.

I wear something called a metatarsal protector with my steel-toed boots. It laces in and protects the top of the foot from something crushing the top part of your foot. They're already around, but I'm not sure where you'd find them....

 

[Chainsaw_Maniac]

MasterBlaster: Ya, if I had have thought of it imediatly I would have sawed the saw log. And you were on the USS Enterprise, as in Star Trek?

SilverBlue: Maybe some day I will learn how to climb trees. It would be fun and maybe even a pay increase over logging. And for sure more profitable than firewood.

blue: Ya, this morning I coinidentily met my neighbor Linda who is a registered nurse and she told me to take my shoe and sock off. I'm gonna be fine, no worries.

treeman45246: that's pretty good with the steel foot protector. I'll have to research that on the net. It would help for any little annoying things that fall on my feet too like wood blocks.

 

[Stumper]

Ben Meadows sells boots/shinguards that encase the foot in armour.-They look unconfortable but would protect in situations that steel toes couldn't touch. I don't know the manufacturer but they are in BenMeadows master catalog-they might be on their website too.

 

[glens]

http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=metatarsal+protective+footwear

I've got a pair of Red Wings with a metatarsal protector that I had to get doing some contract work at a large factory.  I prefer to wear them whenever handling firewood.  The flap is hard plastic and has a lot of soft cushion under it and is held by the laces at the top.  It catches on every bit of underbrush so the boots are not good woods-wear.  I saw some in a shoe store last summer that had a series of inserts that flexed and looked rather like an armadillo.  Have never seen any in chainsaw-protective footwear, though.

Glen

I reckon mine are #4486 here: http://www.redwingshoe.com/search-results.cfm?searchType=advanced&vMens=Y&mt=Y&x=10&y=13

 

[jimmyq]

buddy of mine is a Farrier, he has a pair of removable protective flaps, they go from bottom lace at toe up to about the base of the ankle, leather wrapped metal protection, held in by the laces like Glens's gear. They work well for him but I haent tried them in the field so to speak.

 

[Proj Eng]

Had an Uncle do the very same thing just 2 years ago. Tree rolled and pinned his leg. He cut the tree apart to free himself out from underneath it and then made a crutch to get back to the vehicle. he said it was tough driving stick and clutching with a sawed off limb. he was really lucky. Only had his foot broken in a few places. If the tree hadn't held itself up on some limbs he would have lost his leg entirely.

Regarding foot protection, I had to wear the metatarsal protectors for a few years. They were req'd for work at the factory for large cranes. But they do get caught on everything!!! Almost like having the tongue of the shoe on the outside versus the inside. Takes a while to get used to but would help out in smaller objects hitting the top of your foot. I would suggest the tie on or strap on metatarsal protectors versus the internal or externally attached kind. Then you'd have the option of 2 boot types at half the cost.

 

[Chainsaw_Maniac]

Thanks for the information everyone. I'll check it out.

 

[Jumper]

They do have metatarsal protectors that are internal to the boot and do not get caught up on things. They are a little stiff but OK once you get used to wearing them.