A Safety Reminder

PAFaller · October 07, 2011, 10:24:03 PM

Thought I would share this story as everyone working in the woods occasionally needs a 'dont get too complacent' reminder. I pride myself on being pretty safe, and aside from some bumps, bruises, and twisted ankles have not had any serious logging injuries yet. Truthfully what I am about to describe could have turned out much worse for me than it did.

I spent the last three days working with an excavation contractor cleaning up flood debris in a tributary of Loyalsock Creek. For those of you that have time, look at the September 30th videos on youtube of the devastating floods that wreaked havoc on central PA. Anyway, I was on the saw knocking off rootballs and processing material down to size, to be stacked out of the way before the bank remediation could start. Tuesday and Wednesday went real well, but an hour before completion on Thursday my luck sorta ran out. The excavator operator and I were making our way downstream and working on a nasty pile of debris. The hard part with the job was that the trees had been uprooted and shoved wherever mother nature intended them, and there was no easy way to read the tension in the wood. I had topped off a few small (30 foot long- 8-10 inch stump diameter) sycamore trees on my way into the pile to cut a big soft maple. I cut the two leaders off the soft maple top, and used two bypass cuts on the maple butt that would break the log free when pulled by the machine. The cuts went fine. I backed out and had gotten about ten feet away from the pile when the operator starting squeezing the maple log into the bucket and thumb on his machine. Neither of us saw a large limb on the maple log that was intertwined with one of the smaller sycamores. Neither of us knows exactly what happened then: our only thought is that as he pulled the maple log the sycamore hung up on the maple stump until it had so much tension it let loose. I was walking parallel to the pile and the sycamore caught me with a direct hit to my right thigh. Where I had cut it off was 3.5-4 inches in diameter, so big enough to hurt after springing under such tension. It sent me to the ground hard enough that I lost my breath and my helmet went flying. As did my saw, which suffered a broken side cover from its flying attempt. I sustained a deep muscle bruise and spent most of last night trying to stay comfortable, and of course am limping a bit. The moral of the story is that you can never be too careful. I have known the excavator operator for a couple years now and have every bit of confidence in his ability to handle the machine and keep me safe. I do not blame him at all for what happened, as I had given him the thumbs up I was out of the way far enough...or so I thought. I had gotten complacent because the job had gone so smoothly the two days before I did not feel the need to run 25 feet away from where we were working. However, that incident cut my day short, and could have been a lot worse. 8 inches lower an I might be sitting here with a shattered knee instead of a bruised quadriceps.

Maine372 · October 08, 2011, 10:23:48 AM

ive managed to stay safe in the woods as well. but most of my injuries and near misses have been from wood under tension.

good reminder and glad youre ok.

clww · October 08, 2011, 11:13:53 AM

That is scary. Glad you'll be okay.

Autocar · October 09, 2011, 07:20:59 AM

For sure it's a scarey story that came out good,I would say your a very lucky man ! And it's good for all of us to hear them, then it is always in the back of our minds as we work in the woods.