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 #977678

KICK BACK,TREE FELLING,TREE STUMPING,TREE,STRUCK BY

Event
KICK BACK,TREE FELLING,TREE STUMPING,TREE,STRUCK BY
Linked inspection
No inspection record linked to this accident's victims.
Summary number
977678
Report ID
454713

Event description

EMPLOYEE STRUCK BY FALLING TREE AND KILLED

Investigation abstract

Employee #1 was cutting timber in a sinking cove on the side of a hill in an are a that was 120 feet off of a logging road. Employee #1 was the only cutter worki ng in the immediately area. He had previously cut approximately 8 trees in the a rea. The trees had to be 18 feet at the stump before they could be harvested for timber. Employee #1 was cutting a 20 foot stump of a tree that was approximatel y 60 feet tall at the time the tree being cut began to fall. The tree struck the top of a nearby smaller tree, causing the falling tree to roll off the directio n it was falling. The tree kicked back and struck Employee #1 in the lower body, causing internal injuries and killing him.

Victim

  1. #1 Fatality Age 38 M

    Nature of injury
    21
    Part of body
    19
    Event type
    1
    Source
    43
    Occupation code
    486
    Human factor
    14
    Environmental factor
    18
    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.