OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14390942
C. A. BROOMFIELD
RUSTON, LA·
Event description
Employee killed when struck by falling tree
Investigation abstract
On January 20, 1987, Employee #1, a member of a pulpwood logging crew, was worki m the outside of the tree. ng off State Highway 146, near Ruston, LA, cutting trees with a power saw. A tre e became lodged in the branches of a nearby gum tree that forked into two major sections at the base of the trunk. Employee #1 had moved away from the gum tree and begun to cut another tree when a major portion of the gum tree broke off at the trunk, striking and killing him. The gum tree was hollow and decayed inside; the weight of the lodged tree, which did not itself break off until after the a ccident, had caused it to split. It did not appear that the decayed condition of the gum's trunk, the major contributing factor to the accident, was visible fro
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 43 M
- Nature of injury
- 12
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 39
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 8
- Environmental factor
- 6
- 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.