OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #946459
CHEST,TREE FELLING,CHAIN SAW,JAMMED,TREE,SKIDDER,STRUCK BY,FALLING OBJECT,LOGGING,UNSTABLE LOAD
Event description
Employee struck and killed by falling tree
Investigation abstract
At approximately 12:10 p.m. on November 30, 1989, Employee #1, a tree feller, wa break loose. This caused the falling tree to be pulled to the east, opposite fro m the intended westward direction. Employee #1, who was standing 78 degrees east of the tree's stump, was struck by the falling tree, and sustained serious inju ries to his chest. He died. s felling a 97 ft high and 26 in. diameter white oak tree when the tree set back onto the chain saw blade and the blade bound up. The operator of a Timberjack 3 80A skidder started to push the tree off the saw blade in the direction (west) i n which the tree had been notched to fall. He did not know that an approximately 3 in. by 4 in. area on the south side of the tree had not been cut through and was still attached to the tree stump. When the operator placed the skidder blade and pushed against the tree, the tree rolled to off the south end of the skidde r blade but the 3 in. by 4 in. area still attached to the stump section did not
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 26 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 1
- Source
- 43
- Occupation code
- 496
- Human factor
- 4
- 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.