OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14481741
J & J TREE SERVICE
GRAFTON, WV·
Event description
Employee killed when crushed by falling tree
Investigation abstract
Before climbing a 66 ft tall poplar tree, Employee #1 tested the tree by tapping climbing belt. He sustained crushing injuries to the left side of his chest and was killed. it with a hammer and pulling on it with a guy rope. After the tests, Employee # 1 climbed the tree using a climbing belt and carrying a Homelite XL chain saw wh ich he would use to notch it. While Employee #1 was trimming the tree, coworkers were on a nearby wooded bank keeping a taut guy line (a manila rope) on the tre e to keep the cut sections from falling on an adjacent house trailer. Employee # 1 first trimmed a 3 ft section from the top, and then moved down approximately 1 2 ft. He had notched the next section of the tree when it snapped 3 ft from the base. The tree fell on top of Employee #1, who was still attached to it with his
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 30 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 5
- Source
- 39
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 1
- 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.