Portland man crushed by Stump

[Husky Man]

Last Tuesday night, a man in the North East Portland, OR Russell neighborhood was crushed by a 1200# stump that he was removing from his backyard.

He was working alone, and the cause is listed as a Safety Equipment Malfunction, the details are rather sparse, but it appears that he was hand digging out a large stump, that was “Supported by a Come-Along and a guy wire”, when the malfunction occurred, pinning the man under the stump, it is unclear how long he was pinned under the stump before he died

It apparently happened Tuesday night, and his spouse found him Wednesday morning around 09:15.

It doesn’t say why she didn’t find him until the next morning, that would certainly pique my curiosity.



Doug

 

[Seachaser]

Dang! Prayers for his family. Bad way to go.

 

[capetrees]

Seems a bit odd. How does a person digging out a stump by hand bet pinned under it? Kinda like the time a guy around here dropped a tree on himself and his helper. How? I just wonder so I don't find myself in that position.

Freaky things happen I guess

 

[lone wolf]

Seems a bit odd. How does a person digging out a stump by hand bet pinned under it? Kinda like the time a guy around here dropped a tree on himself and his helper. How? I just wonder so I don't find myself in that position.

Freaky things happen I guess

Large uprooted stump, I imagine

 

[James Sawyer]

Prayer for man and his family.

 

[Del_]

Seems a bit odd. How does a person digging out a stump by hand bet pinned under it? Kinda like the time a guy around here dropped a tree on himself and his helper. How? I just wonder so I don't find myself in that position.

Freaky things happen I guess

Likely he was pulling the stump to the side so he could get down in the hole and cut more roots. Maybe even head first.

He may have cut a root or dug soil and the root ball shifted in the hole pinning him.

Or a similar scenario with an uprooted tree stump.

Or maybe one of the stump support systems failed or shifted.

He may have suffered for hours trying to breath before succumbing.

I lost a high school friend shortly are high school in a crushing accident. He working on a tractor pulled hydraulic cultivator that was leaking fluid and did something that released the fluid, and the machine descended upon him. The word at the time was he lived for hours before succumbing. It's choking me up now just writing about it 50 years later.

 

[Husky Man]

Seems a bit odd. How does a person digging out a stump by hand bet pinned under it? Kinda like the time a guy around here dropped a tree on himself and his helper. How? I just wonder so I don't find myself in that position.

Freaky things happen I guess

None of the articles were very clear on the details, but they stated that some “Safety Equipment Malfunctioned “.
A couple articles mentioned a come along and a guy wire.

It seems that he had hand dug fairly deeply around the stump, and evidently had tension on the stump with a come along, and was in the pit digging or cutting away roots, when the come along and/or guy wire failed, and the stump dropped on him

Note to self, Do NOT use a Harbor Freight come along to suspend a load above where you are working

It supposedly happened IIRC, Tuesday Night, but his spouse didn’t find him until Wednesday morning?

Maybe she works a night shift, but I Know that if I didn’t come to bed, my Wife wouldn’t wait until well after sun up the next morning to be looking for me.

We watch a lot of True Crime shows, and my Wife tells me all the time, that I am worth more to her Alive than Dead, maybe I Shouldn’t increase my Life Insurance


Doug

 

[pdqdl]

 

[poleframer]

Winter 2 years ago, heavy snows, a neighbor had several trees near her house uproot and came down, clipping her house (very lucky, 2 feet more and she would have lost her kitchen) and had me do repairs to the house and deck. One fair sized fir went through the deck corner, driving the railing post through the framing and 2 courses of block.
So I bucked the trees up, and on that uprooted fir when I got to the bottom it flipped back upright, putting the rootwad, back in the hole in a second. Stump was sitting there as if nothing had happened.
Sounds like if something similar happened to this guy.

 

[pdqdl]

I have done that a few times, also. That wasn't the case for this fatality, though.

See the video. He was digging it up, and crawled beneath while it was being held up. We can only presume he went below to cut off a root or some other activity related to getting it out of the hole.

 

[Breckinridge Elkins]

Not to disparage the dead but the only time I see someone put that much physical labor into such a trivial task there is usually methamphetamine involved.
I had a tree service come out and grind up three stumps about that size and the cost was trivial. They left the site so clean you would never know the trees had been there.

 

[Del_]

I have done that a few times, also. That wasn't the case for this fatality, though.

See the video. He was digging it up, and crawled beneath while it was being held up. We can only presume he went below to cut off a root or some other activity related to getting it out of the hole.

The guys standing in the hole looks like it's depth is just above their knees.

I still think it most likely that he was head first in the hole probably cutting a root when the stump shifted.

 

[Husky77]

Seems a bit odd. How does a person digging out a stump by hand bet pinned under it? Kinda like the time a guy around here dropped a tree on himself and his helper. How? I just wonder so I don't find myself in that position.

Freaky things happen I guess

The answer is very easy

 

[grizz55chev]

The answer is very easy

FAAFO. Common sense ain't so common.

 

[iowa_jim]

None of the articles were very clear on the details, but they stated that some “Safety Equipment Malfunctioned “.
A couple articles mentioned a come along and a guy wire.

It seems that he had hand dug fairly deeply around the stump, and evidently had tension on the stump with a come along, and was in the pit digging or cutting away roots, when the come along and/or guy wire failed, and the stump dropped on him

Note to self, Do NOT use a Harbor Freight come along to suspend a load above where you are working

It supposedly happened IIRC, Tuesday Night, but his spouse didn’t find him until Wednesday morning?

Maybe she works a night shift, but I Know that if I didn’t come to bed, my Wife wouldn’t wait until well after sun up the next morning to be looking for me.

We watch a lot of True Crime shows, and my Wife tells me all the time, that I am worth more to her Alive than Dead, maybe I Shouldn’t increase my Life Insurance


Doug

I wouldn't trust a Snap On hoist either. Overhead loads are trouble, and many things can go wrong. As for the cause of death, perhaps he was crushed and died quickly, or worse, he was pinned and couldn't take a breath to call for help.

 

[pdqdl]

We don't have any details, but I would guess that a failure at the anchor points was far more likely than a hoisting device failure.

For all we know, the guy anchored it to the ground, and his stakes pulled out. Or perhaps tied it off to a root nub on the stump that perhaps broke off. Or something like that.

Bottom line: NEVER work beneath something that can fall and crush you. And... try to avoid doing dangerous work without a spotter capable of saving you when things go wrong.

 

[ihookem]

It can be dangerous cutting trees down, that is for sure. I can't figure out why he was down there in the first place. Grind the stupid thing down and leave it in the ground . ... All that work and took his life to boot.

 

[rarefish383]

Winter 2 years ago, heavy snows, a neighbor had several trees near her house uproot and came down, clipping her house (very lucky, 2 feet more and she would have lost her kitchen) and had me do repairs to the house and deck. One fair sized fir went through the deck corner, driving the railing post through the framing and 2 courses of block.
So I bucked the trees up, and on that uprooted fir when I got to the bottom it flipped back upright, putting the rootwad, back in the hole in a second. Stump was sitting there as if nothing had happened.
Sounds like if something similar happened to this guy.

I've seen enough root balls sit back in the hole, that now I expect it. Some are funny and pick a 15' log back up real slow. Some are scary as heck and flop back in a second. Probably 15-20 years ago there was fatality of a toddler. The grandfather was bucking up the log and the toddler was playing in the hole. We often use the old saying, expect the unexpected. But, if you have never heard of something, you can't look out for it.