OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #221368764
GARCIA PROFESSIONAL TREE SERVICE, INC.
OAKLAND, CA·
Event description
Employee fractures leg, injures knee when struck by rigging
Investigation abstract
At 12:30 p.m. on May 18, 2021, an employee was working as a tree care worker for falling trunk. This procedure had been done in the past without incident. The employee had already cut a horizontal tree section using this rigging method. Coworkers on the ground noticed that the rope connected to the tree uphill was directly above the employee. The coworkers brought this to the employee's attention several times. Despite the warning, the employee continued to cut the trunk. As the trunk fell, the rope struck the employee on his upper left leg. The employee was lowered from the tree with the assistance of the crew on the ground. An ambulance was called and the employee was taken to the hospital. The employee was hospitalized to treat a fractured femur and fibula and soft tissue damage to his knee. a company that performs tree trimming and removal operations. The employee works with five coworkers. The employer was contracted to remove a large eucalyptus tree on a slope in a residential area. The employer had removed all the horizontal branches leaving the vertical trunk to be cut by a climber in sections. The employer tasked the employee with climbing the tree to cut the tree trunk into smaller sections. The crew connected a rope to an adjacent tree located uphill to prevent the trunk from rolling down the hill and damaging property once it was cut. The crew on the ground held another rope to guide the
Victim
-
#1 Hospitalized Age 36 M
- Event type
- 1
- Occupation code
- 495
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.