I was raised to always help people if I can. A few years ago, I started working with a crew of volunteers that do disaster relief. We were down in Clarksville last week. While I was there, we watched another crew attempt to drop what was left of a pretty good size tree. The tornado had ripped off almost all of its limbs and snapped the top off about 30' up. They managed to launch a rope up over the top and it got snagged on the jagged top. It looks like a 3/8 rope, but it could have been a 1/2". Looking at it, I thought it was overkill because it would have been easy enough to cut it and wedge it over. The rope was stuck, so they ended up wrapping the rope around the tree once which brought it about 1/3 of the way down. It wouldn't quite reach across the valley to where they could get their old suburban, so they had to use a log chain for the last 20'. No big deal right? Plenty of leverage since it was still so high. The guy starts making the face cut about 5' up because there's a wooden fence panel against the tree and apparently he didn't want to rip it out of the way. It was the only thing that was left of the tree, and the area was a total loss, well almost a total loss which I'll get to in a minute. So the guy makes a really deep face cut, almost half way into the tree. It looks like he's running a 25" bar on a 661, and the tree is probably 28" across at the face cut. He climbs up on something on the other side of the fence panel and finishes the face cut. Then he comes back around and brings a bucket to stand on to make the back cut. At this point, I'm thinking I should walk over and see what their game plan is because it looks like they may not have one. I'm not a professional, and these guys had a fair amount of equipment so I figured maybe its not my place and I walk away. After a while, one of our guys comes up and tells me "the rest of the story". They started pulling with the suburban and the rope is tighter than a banjo string. You guessed it, the rope finally brakes, but they do get the guy to stop cutting in time. Next, it sounded like they tried to make another face cut and managed to snap the hinge. The guy got out of the way and didn't get hurt, but the tree ended up falling on a NICE new 6x12 enclosed trailer that was otherwise in MINT condition. It was the ONLY thing in the entire valley that wasn't utterly destroyed, and very view people in the area were able to afford any insurance.
Moral of the story, BE CAREFUL WHO YOU WORK WITH. This is especially true when you are volunteering. Just because someone has been doing something a long time, does not mean they know what they are doing. Our group offers a week long training course every couple of years. If no one in the group you're with has been through some kind of organized training, don't assume they know what they are doing. Despite having the best of intentions, they can get you seriously injured or worse.
Moral of the story, BE CAREFUL WHO YOU WORK WITH. This is especially true when you are volunteering. Just because someone has been doing something a long time, does not mean they know what they are doing. Our group offers a week long training course every couple of years. If no one in the group you're with has been through some kind of organized training, don't assume they know what they are doing. Despite having the best of intentions, they can get you seriously injured or worse.
