Positrack
ArboristSite Lurker
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.
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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