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 #761387

TREE FELLING,STRUCK BY

Event
TREE FELLING,STRUCK BY
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
761387
Report ID
453710

Event description

EMPLOYEE WAS STRUCK BY FALLING TREE

Investigation abstract

Employee #1, regularly a motor vehicle operator, was supervising a crew of four prison inmates in clearing a right of way for a road-widening project. Two inmat es were piling brush on the east side of the road, one was operating a chain saw , and the other was using a bush ax. The inmate operating the chain saw was cutt ing a 6-inch diameter tree 30 to 35 feet tall. Employee #1 had finished setting out warning signs in the road and walked across the path of the falling tree whi le trying to position one of the men in a blind curve. The employee was struck o n the head and shoulder by the tree suffering a fractured skull and dying the ne xt day.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 36 M

    Nature of injury
    12
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    39
    Occupation code
    803
    Human factor
    1
    Environmental factor
    6
    Hazardous substance
    8880
    Task assigned
    2

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.