OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #788141
HEAD,TREE,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,LOGGING
Event description
Employee later dies when struck by falling tree
Investigation abstract
At approximately 10:30 a.m. on July 20, 1989, a father and his son, Employee #1, as approximately 10 feet from the employee when he looked up and saw the tree fa lling toward them. He yelled at the employee and jumped into the clear. When he turned around, he saw that the employee had been hit and summoned help. Other wo rkers nearby responded and Employee #1 was transported to Douglas Community Hosp ital by ambulance. He remained in a coma for approximately one week, as the resu lt of his head injury. He died on July 27, 1989. were felling second growth timber on flat terrain. The father had faced an appr oximate 18 in. diameter at breast height 100 foot tall Douglas fir. As a back cu t was made in the tree, it set back against the intended direction of the fall. He informed his son and a witness that the tree had set back and to watch it. Th e employee and the witness were in the clear when the father informed them of th e hazard. The father then proceeded to fell some small cedar trees, which were i n the way of the tree that was set back. For some reason, Employee #1 took his s aw and placed himself behind the set back fir tree. The witness stated that he w
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 16 M
- Nature of injury
- 6
- Part of body
- 13
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 43
- Occupation code
- 496
- 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.