104,543Records 70,659Employers 84,666Hospitalizations 27,563Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-09-30
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14259477

CLEARANCE,FRACTURE,LUNG,TREE LIMB,WORK RULES,RIB,STRUCK BY,FLYING OBJECT,LOGGING,PUNCTURE

Event
CLEARANCE,FRACTURE,LUNG,TREE LIMB,WORK RULES,RIB,STRUCK BY,FLYING OBJECT,LOGGING,PUNCTURE
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14259477
Report ID
625700

Event description

Employee dies after being struck by tree limb

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was felling pine trees because they were infested with southern pine beetles. He cut pine that was approximately 130 ft. The pine fell through the c rown of a black gum tree located 25 ft, 10 in. to the north. The pine broke a 19 -ft long, 5-1/2-in.-diameter limb off the black gum tree, and caused the gum tre e to bend over. When the pine hit the ground, the black gum swung up, propelling the broken limb back toward Employee #1. The limb struck him across the back, b reaking several ribs and puncturing a lung. He died two days later.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 28 M

    Nature of injury
    18
    Part of body
    28
    Event type
    1
    Source
    39
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    13
    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.