East Tennessee Update
I admire you guys who make/made your living with a saw. Just put in 14+ hours and I am beat. Tonight I'll either sleep well due to exhaustion or not at all due to pain.
I and about 15 others spent the morning through mid-afternoon clearing county roads from a single lane down the middle to clearance side to side. I started off the morning by reminding all of the cutters that everything will be under tension and instructing the handlers that everything will be under tension and to watch the cutters because they will be focused especially because everything will be under tension. Another offered prayer for the folks in need and for safety. Thank GOD the prayers were heard as I'm not sure the message got through to the folks on the ground including me. First tree I cut, I failed to notice a small (less than 1" in diameter)tree underneath. With almost everyone watching, I get hit right between the eyes (no hard hat). It stunned me for a second and woke everyone else up. From a safety perspective the day was uneventful until a fella got mesmerized watching the 125 cut up a large white oak and failed to notice that he had moved back into the fall zone of a pine snag that another was falling. Pine needles that were stuck in the broken top brushed his shoulder. One more inch and his shoulder would have been crushed. Two more inches and he would have been killed. This happen no less than 2 minutes after we had moved him out of the fall zone and pointed out that felling was beginning.
I have very few pictures and none of actual work. I felt like I was invading someone's privacy to take pictures of the devastation we saw as we drove from one area to the next. It felt bad to drive by folks standing in the midst of debris with nothing but cardboard boxes to contain any belongings they could find. There was nothing we could do for them except make it easier for others to get to them.
We spent the late afternoon and evening clearing around a home that had survived. We didn't need the long bar but did use the 3 footer on the white oak. The PM800 got a real work out but I must have mismeasured the mix as it smoked so bad you couldn't see the cut when the muffler side was up. It ran like nothing was wrong. The PM8200 quit after a half tank and would not restart. I'll have to figure that out another day. The 036Pro would bog with the slightest pressure even on 10" stuff. I thought I would richen it only to discover it has limiter caps and it was at the limit. Contrary to my MACs it has always been dealer serviced so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised by the caps but I was.
After my last episode of sticking two saws with root ball stand ups as I cut the stem, I rehearsed in my mind my errors and a better game plan. I got to use it today with the large white oak which had a 20" pine root ball intertwined. Both root balls went up and the stem came down just as rehearsed. What a relief.
Reflecting back on the day I was thankful for the privilege of getting to help some folks in desperate need. I was also thankful for the first time for all the felling mistakes I made over the years. Particularly, all the trees I hung in others - a regular occurance in my younger days of many misadventures which through no merit of my own I survived and taught me some of the dynamics involved as well as techniques to get out of such pickles. I never dreamed I would be in a situation where I had to cut trees suspended by telephone lines. But for my waywardness, I would not have been prepared for the reversal that can occur in the end nor the suddenness.
I'll try to post a few pictures.
Ron
Loaded for bear -
It is hard to imagine that you look out at the mountains and see this beauty -
And turn your head and see a double wide standing almost two stories high -