Re: Tree safety incident - a long story barely mad

Posted by Billy NY on February 26, 2006 at 10:23:24 from (205.188.117.14):

In Reply to: Tree safety incident - a long story barely made sh posted by williamf on February 26, 2006 at 08:10:14:

It's a bad experience, that is good to share, it't probably been mentioned here many times too, but helps reinforce the fact that clearing trees and brush is a dangerous task. You are fortunate and am glad to hear you did not get severly injured or worse. I think it's good to post an experience like this, really gives a perspective on the dangers to consider. There are a lot of professionals who deal with this work, but with so many people taking it upon themselves to do their own work, many may not know the dangers involved.

I think the biggest mistake one can make is not having an exit route, I assume the Ford was an older open station model, hard to get out of danger quickly. Had to take a vine covered tree down last fall, took me longer to cut escape routes than to take the tree down !

When I was younger, I took a job with a large site work contractor and being low man on the totem pole, they assigned me to their oldest machine a 955 H or L, think was a 1970 or close to it, only had a weather cab, no r.o.p.s, company before that I ran a 977-L, (amongst other machines) with a stout r.o.p.s. limb riser /brush package, only screened at the back, they did not do forest work, but I really liked the set up, even looks great on that 977. None of the foreman ever gave any lecture on tree work at neither outfuit, and the company I took the new job with, started assigning me to jobsites that needed easements cleared for the pipe crew to follow in after. Even working in the sandy southern NJ areas, pines and some hardwoods, not real tall, but just as dangerous, I completed all the assigned work without incident, a lot of the sandy areas were easy to get the trees out. Then they sent me to a few jobsites with some really large hardwood trees that were to be removed, no training, no help, like a laborer or nothing. Lowboy delivers the machine, foreman calls you the night before, tells you what job to go to. I won't brag, but I had become a good operator on most earthwork machinery, but this kind of tree clearing work, with large trees, set a flag off. I'm like,"would'nt it be better to cut them down and remove the stumps, we have plenty of excavators ?" Well I did things on my own, stopped an excavator from working on a foundation hole and we worked together, never asked the foreman either, he must have realized I needed the help to do things safely, otherwise I think it would have been an argument, because I took no consideration in stopping another machine and the work it was doing no matter what site or foreman, always for my own safety. I would dig out the base while he braced it with the hoe, just as a safety precaution, then either the hoe or the 955 would push it over. Thinking about it now, no training, just do it mentality, could have put us in danger, you really have no idea what could happen, what if it twisted and came back at you, or top fell off like mentioned previously. I am thankful to have had some smarts, I did not really give a lot of thought or worry to this work, tried to do my job in good faith, but not realizing how dangerous it was, we cleared a lot of sites in that time, I'm glad I did not end up in one of those OSHA investigations you can look up on the governments website, all kinds of dozer and equipment fatalities, some bizarre, some not.

Even a D-8 size crawler, had best have a stout r.o.p.s. it's desgined to hold the weight of the tractor, in conjunction with the seat belt to protect the operator from being crushed, not for falling objects like trees, they are stout and withstand quite a bit, a healthy tree may not make a dent in it, this makes you feel safe, but if a big one were to fall on it, I'd not want to be inside. Have run many D8K's in those days, few D9's too, really seem invincible on tractors this size. Some of the machines fitted with heavy duty brush packages for massive clearing operations, they have a pusher attachment, so you can push way up high on a tree and keep a fair distance, lot of examples of this in Australia.

I cleared a small road down a hill a few years ago with my D7, had cut anything dangerous down, off to the side, but there was a fair amount of brush and vines, one 8" dia section was hung up and don't you know it found me, part of it whacked me in the side of the head, gave a slight concussion, was not good, another limb left a rub mark streak down the fuel tank, after all the years of foolin with clearing, had thought I eliminated the danger, nope, think the vines yanked it over my way, but it could have been much worse, this is an open station tractor, and I know better. Saw a picture of a guy pinned on the same model, 6" dia tree killed him, might have impaled him on a lever, it was a news article from the 50's someone posted, it really don't take much. I don't fool with machinery and trees anymore whenever possible. This guy has a 12 foot blade, and clears such a wide swath, you don't worry about things getting close, but what happened above, was a combination of things, and before you know it you're taking sucker punches from tree limbs ! Good reminder, play it safe with tree and brush clearing.

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