105,313Records 71,083Employers 85,290Hospitalizations 27,770Amputations 2015-01-01 2025-10-31
Safety Incidents OSHA Severe Injury Reports · 2015–2025

OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14497051

CLEARANCE,HEAD,TREE FELLING,HEMORRHAGE,WORK RULES,SKULL,TREE,STRUCK BY,LOGGING,INATTENTION

Event
CLEARANCE,HEAD,TREE FELLING,HEMORRHAGE,WORK RULES,SKULL,TREE,STRUCK BY,LOGGING,INATTENTION
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
14497051
Report ID
627100

Event description

Employee killed when struck by tree trunk

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, a log loader, was standing behind his brother, a chain saw operator , watching him fell a tree. When the sawyer finished cutting the tree, he steppe d to the right and cleared a smaller tree. As this tree fell, it struck another small tree about 20 feet away and slid down its trunk. This caused the trunk of the felled tree to lift up and whip towards Employee #1. It struck him in the ch est and head knocking him backward to the ground. The trunk then landed on top o f Employee #1, who sustained severe cranial hemorrhaging and a possible fracture d skull. He was killed.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 22 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    5
    Event type
    1
    Source
    43
    Occupation code
    999
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    5
    Hazardous substance
    8880
    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.