SS MAYFLOAT
Admiral
- Joined
- May 17, 2001
- Messages
- 6,372
Last night was a painful one. My crew and I was hired to remove a dead tree. It had been dead for 3 years according to the owner. The tree was about 60' tall with my bucket truck only going to 34'. The tree had a lean towards his house and landscaping so I couldn't drop it in that direction. Owner wanted it dropped in his driveway. So I go up an put a good heavey duty rope (anchor rope) up in the tree as far as I could get it. Then I was to angle cut about 25' up from the base. I needed to do this because of other trees in the way.<br /><br />Eveything was going good until the saw run into some rotten wood. Tree fell in the direction we wanted to, but the top branches got caught up in the trees next to it. So now my saw is pinched, the upper part of the tree is laying horizontal with the ground up about 25 to 30'. Oh CRAP!. The lower part where I cut stayed up instead of falling to the ground. <br /><br />So I get my other say to cut out my good saw and to drop the base to the ground. THis made me nervous because I just knew when I would free my saw that the part of the tree I was cutting on would swing down and whip the branch tip back at me. I stopped and studied the situation more. No other options. I finsished cutting out my saw, the trunk dropped down, tip come flying towards me while in my bucket. I grabbed onto my good saw with my left hand, the other saw still running in my right and ducked down inside my bucket. Too late. The branches came across the top of my bucket taking out a chunk of scalp, and cutting my eyebrow. My eyeglasses went flying. Lucky they went into his little pond undamaged.<br /><br />I got shook up quiet a bit and everyone hollering if I was okay. Not knowing because it takes awhile for blood to start oozing. I managed to get the one saw shut off and put them into the bucket with me. Then burnt my leg on one of the mufflers. By the time I got the bucket parked on the truck I could feel the blood running down my face. Oh boy, wife is going to be pissed!<br /><br />So now I've got this black eye that is almost swelled shut and a big goose egg size bump on top of my head. They found my glasses and then we finished cutting the logs and loaded them up.<br /><br />I made the mistake that the top branches that got caught up were only about an inch in diameter. I assumed that them being dead for 3 years that they would have just snapped off. To find out that it was an ash tree. Some hard stuff, they didn't snap off so easy after all.<br /><br />All in all, I'm okay, sore but okay. I have always heard that dead trees are unpredictable over live ones. Now I know why.. Sad to say, but he has two more he wants removed. Just as dead and tall, but not in a confined area. <br /><br />Goes to show ya, just can't be careful enough sometimes...
