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 #869230

HEAD,LOGGER,STRUCK BY,LOGGING

Event
HEAD,LOGGER,STRUCK BY,LOGGING
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
869230
Report ID
522000

Event description

EMPLOYEE KILLED WHEN STRUCK BY TREE LIMB

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was felling a tree from the upper level of a ridge. As the tree fell it struck a smaller tree that was approximately 35 ft away and 25 ft lower in e levation on the ridge. The smaller tree bent away from Employee #1 but as the la rger tree slid by, the smaller tree whipped back toward him. A limb on the small er tree broke when struck by the larger tree and the limb was flung back strikin g the Employee #1 in the head. The force of the impact was so great that, even w ith head protection, the impact resulted in Employee #1's death.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 39 M

    Nature of injury
    6
    Part of body
    13
    Event type
    1
    Source
    39
    Occupation code
    496
    Human factor
    14
    Environmental factor
    13
    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.