OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14198055
CHEST,CHAIN SAW,TREE,SKIDDER
Event description
EMPLOYEE KILLED WHEN STRUCK IN THE CHEST BY A TREE
Investigation abstract
Employee #1 was cutting down a gum tree using a gasoline powered chain saw. The suspended in the air snapped back, striking Employee #1 in the chest and knocki ng him to the ground, killing him. employee cut through over 90 percent of the tree trunk when the saw started to b ind in the kerf of the cut. A log skidder was used to push the tree in order to remove the saw from where it was binding. When the skidder backed away from the tree, the tree fell across the cab and onto the skidder, with the stump end of t he tree suspended above the ground. Employee #1 climbed on top of the log skidde r with a chain saw, 10 feet above the ground, to cut the tree so that they could remove the log skidder without damaging it. He cut through 7.5 inches of the 12 -inch-wide tree, when the tree broke in two pieces. The end of the tree that was
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 56 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 42
- Occupation code
- 496
- Human factor
- 1
- Environmental factor
- 8
- Task assigned
- 1
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.