OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14443485

PORTABLE POWER TOOL,AMPUTATED,CHAIN SAW,WORK RULES,LIMBING,LOGGING,LEG,UNSTABLE POSITION

1985-03-20T00:00:00

Event: PORTABLE POWER TOOL,AMPUTATED,CHAIN SAW,WORK RULES,LIMBING,LOGGING,LEG,UNSTABLE POSITION
Linked inspection: No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number: 14443485
Report ID: 355117

Event description

Employee's leg amputated by chain saw

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was limbing a large oak tree. He was standing among the top branches between two forks of the tree in an area that he had previously cleared. He was cutting a 3 to 4 in. diameter limb from the bottom up. When the cut was nearly complete, the limb broke and the tree began to turn toward him. He tried to push the chain's brake to stop the blade but a small branch was against it and it wo uld not move forward. The saw kept running, amputating Employee #1's leg above t he knee.

Victim

#1 Hospitalized Age 46 M

Nature of injury
1

Part of body
23

Event type
1

Source
21

Occupation code
496

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.