Man Suffocates after dead palm fronds slide down over him. Cali, 8/03

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Originally posted by treeman82
However I am pretty sure it is allowed in an aerial rescue.
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In a rescue situation, anything goes. Priority shifts from the tree to the person in trouble. Noone with half a brain would ever crap on you for spiking in a rescue.



I have no experience with palms, but I think if I was on the ground and saw that happening, I would have called 911, then strapped on a cheap saddle and some spikes with a good hand saw and hauled ass up there to cut those fronds off the guy. Going straight up a pole on spikes really isn't a horribly difficult skill to master.
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Tough call without having been there at the time. No doubt this question has run thru that groundie's mind ever since- if there was something he could have done and didn't.

In your case, you have climbing experience. I would imagine his groundie didn't, and would have been more likely to just add another person to rescue.

Who knows?
 
It is difficult to cut thorough palm fronds rapidly, especially dried ones, with a handsaw. Even if you were using a new Silky. That is why we use cane knives....10 times faster. Dried fronds would be the only ones to have slid down like that. The news article said several hundred pounds of fronds slid down. That poor climber probably died within 5 minutes of it happening. I doubt that I would have been able to save him even if I already had my climbing gear on.
 
Palm tree death incidents

I'm trying to write an article about this for a journal. I'd like to summarize as many cases as possible. Google came up with a number of newspaper articles. Talking to the coroners in two counties around here their respone was along the lines of "Happens all the time." If anyone can point me towards other cases I would appreciate it.

And there was a comment above about climbing to rescue someone if this happened. Remember that the problem is the mass of interwoven palm fronds sliding down as a mass once their support is cut underneath. If you climb up and rescue someone, the mass is still there and can still slide. Don't be the next victim.

Roger

http://www.azcentral.com/community/phoenix/articles/2009/04/11/20090411palmdeath0412.html

http://www.fresnobee.com/406/story/1550500.html

http://www.lvrj.com/news/breaking_news/44103747.html
 
If ever there was a job that called for that little rope saw thingy I think this would be it. I think that is how the hell I would do the dam job. It even sounds like you might as well just leave the bucket at the yard too unless you are going up there cause I will be down on the ground with my string saw thingy ready to run.
 
Not to be unkind to the FD, but it sounds like there was 45 minutes of ####ing around before anybody even tried to call the climber who did the retrieval.

This is me thinking out loud with no commercial or climbing experience, but I think it applies to all aerial work, not just palms:

Are you the only climber on your crew?
Do you know the other climbers in the area?
Does your groundie have all their cell phone numbers handy in case something happens to you up there and you can't climb down?
If I were a climber trapped in palm fronds, or trying to tourniquet my leg with my lanyard because I just cut myself badly and I can't come down without outside help, I'd want another climber coming to rig me down. Have the groundies call 911 and some climbers. If climbers and FD respond, maybe the person most suited for the job will be on hand in minutes, not after an hour.
 
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BlueRidgeMark said:
Way to revive that 5 year old thread, people!


:dizzy:
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It makes sense when you look at the reviver's reason.......i.e. writing an article. Regardless, 2 things are clear
1) there are some interesting thoughts about getting the guy down
2) 5 years later, it's still a lousy way to go and some guys might be cutting palms now that weren't then and maybe they never knew of the risk.
 
This was undoubtedly a Washingtonia, probably a robusta. They can and do, collect well over 500kg ( 1100lb ) of dead fronds if left untouched for a few years. Yes they are dangerous and yes you should prune them from the top down not the bottom up.

As to how you would rescue a climber who was pinnned by hundreds of pounds of dead fronds? Murphy has it. Scarf the damn thing as soon as possible. Current research shows us that suspension trauma is likely after only 5 minutes and that does not include extra pressure applied by a large mass above the climber. I usually climb our washie' prunes or removals and if I was stuck under that sort of load I would absolutely prefer to take my chances with felling injury rather than the certain slow suffocation of pressure induced death.
 
Trimming Washingtonia

I'm just a homeowner who likes saws. This palm tree thing is an academic interest of mine, related to the suspension trauma mentioned above. Seems obvious (now, not a week ago) that using a lift to trim these from above is the way to go. Are there alternatives that are safe? I gather from the accident reports I read in the news that the people who died just climbed up the trunk then couldn't release their ropes/equipment once the ring of fronds came down, either because they'd been knocked unconscious or there was just too much force bearing down on them. This is an issue of having to unweight the equipment to have it let go? Any insights appreciated.:confused:

Roger
 
CaveSaw said:
I'm just a homeowner who likes saws. This palm tree thing is an academic interest of mine, related to the suspension trauma mentioned above. Seems obvious (now, not a week ago) that using a lift to trim these from above is the way to go. Are there alternatives that are safe? I gather from the accident reports I read in the news that the people who died just climbed up the trunk then couldn't release their ropes/equipment once the ring of fronds came down, either because they'd been knocked unconscious or there was just too much force bearing down on them. This is an issue of having to unweight the equipment to have it let go? Any insights appreciated.:confused:

Roger
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You might be able to work the safety part of the snaps, but I am pretty sure I would not be able to hip thrust a 1/2 ton to get slack in my lanyard to unclip the lanyard. I imagine if they do not gaff out that the weight would simply collapse them to crouch position. The lanyard might create an indent in the palm that would make it harder for the it to slide down. If the lanyard did slide, I imagine you would gaff out, slide butt first down the stem until you hit bottom or your body and gear creates a wedge that prevents the mass from sliding further. Either you are keeping 500+ pounds from falling or you are semi-free falling underneath it. If you are holding it up and you can somehow get yourself unhooked, you are now in free fall situation unless you have a separate tie-in. If you don't have that tie-in, I don't imagine you would have much time to get one in if you could. Either way, I can't imagine many good chances of survival unless the descent is slowed enough until you hit the ground and can be extracted.
 
I am a Commercial Arborist in South Florida (Broward County) and trimming Palms is probably a good majority of our business. I have heard of this happening before. I do have to agree that it was probably a Washingtonia filifera (spp.?), which are massive trees. Tall and fat. They can get skirted, or hold on to dead, dry fronds, from crown to ground. Who knows if this palm has ever been pruned. I can believe that a 70' Palm with a full "beard" could have hundreds of pounds of frolnds on it. I do know that ANSI A300 Standards advise us to prune skirted palms like that from the top down. Bruce Smith who is an excellent Arborist/ educator with North American Training Solutions has a lot of input on this topic, as he is on the ANSI commitee. They advise us to set a climbing line with maybe a Black Widow micro bull line, ascending the palm either foot lock or body thrust and pruning from the crown down to the end of the skirt. I used to find it hard to believe these stories also, but have come to believe that they are true. We don't get a lot of filifera here, mostly robusta, but I do believe that the Desert Fan Palm are capable of smothering someone. Basically pruning palms is no fun, a mindless task, but it is a necessary evil for those of us living in the sub tropics. As far as the rescue, it is a shame there was nobody on his crew capable of performing an aerial rescue. I sure hope my guys would come rescue my ass.
 
senones said:
...They advise us to set a climbing line with maybe a Black Widow micro bull line, ascending the palm either foot lock or body thrust and pruning from the crown down to the end of the skirt. I used to find it hard to believe these stories also, but have come to believe that they are true. We don't get a lot of filifera here, mostly robusta, but I do believe that the Desert Fan Palm are capable of smothering someone. Basically pruning palms is no fun, a mindless task, but it is a necessary evil for those of us living in the sub tropics. As far as the rescue, it is a shame there was nobody on his crew capable of performing an aerial rescue. I sure hope my guys would come rescue my ass.
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What do you set the line to on the palms? Are the "crotches" of the secure enough to climb on? I am not sure if they even calls those joints crotches. With the crushing suffocating, I imagine your first priority would be to get the weight off them?
 
I live in the florida keys, and i use an adjustable false crotch, and Ddrt the up. I also use a big shot to get my throw line over the top. Use the same tenq. on Royal palms, (seed pods are a hazard in public areas) that no one can get to with a lift.
 
SRT in Palms

VL07 said:
I live in the florida keys, and i use an adjustable false crotch, and Ddrt the up. I also use a big shot to get my throw line over the top. Use the same tenq. on Royal palms, (seed pods are a hazard in public areas) that no one can get to with a lift.
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So I'm learning as I go here. I have a pretty strong background in SRT from caving/SAR but I am having to learn new terms for arborist activities. If I understand correctly you're putting a line over the tree, anchoring an end of it then climbing the other to reach the top. Once there you establish another anchor (a false crotch) from which to work to get the job done. You may have a doubled rope from that ancher/false crotch for going up and down as you work. Once you're done, you can derig the false crotch and descend on the original line that you climbed to get up there, then pull that line down. Is that right?
 

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