Widow Makers

[2dogs]

The first two images are of one of our Boy Scouts from camping trip last month. The branch is green and from a 130' redwood. We all heard a loud crack and turned around in time to see the scout run up hill. The widow maker landed right where he had been walking. He didn't know the branch broke off right above him, he just heard the crack and started running. That size branch would have killed him.

This is a link to a news article posted today. A woman in SFO was killed by a redwood branch. It has been windy here along the coast for the past 2 dayso
http://www.insidebayarea.com/ci_8929875?source=rss

This last image has nothing to do with trees except that our troop specializes in forestry projects. These are Humboldt Squid that the troop got to disect at the local NOAA facility.

I don't know how many people are killed by falling branches each year but even one is too many. When you enter a stand Look Up, Look Down, Look Around. Make up your own simlimb and try it out, you may change your snag falling tactics. Be careful during and after a wind event.

 

[slowp]

Hooktender almost causes heart attack!

The last evil hooktender incident: Was up in a thinning slapping paint on a tail tree so the hooktender could cut it and derig it easier. Then we'd have a critter log left on the ground--everybody happy. I was walking away and heard that distinctive CRACK overhead and I yelled a 4 letter word and bolted.
Then heard, "it's ok, I was just pulling the haywire down!" The hooktender had jerked one of the lines out of the tree and broken a branch. My heart was going pretty hard.

I have had a large branch rocket down and impale itself just a few inches from my side. I'm afraid it would have caused mortal damage had it hit...and that was on a still day just walking through a thinned unit. I get nasty looks, but when I have to take people out on dog and pony shows, they either wear hardhats or stay up on the road. It is amazing how many people don't like to wear hardhats and in recently cut thinnings, stuff is always coming down out of the leave trees.

 

[treejunkie13]

My 2nd or 3rd day out in the woods tryin to be a timber faller, I witnessed a kid get whacked. I was fillin up the saw and heard it flyin through the air, I couldn't even get LOOK OUT! out of my mouth before he was knocked right out of his boots... I think his hard hat ran faster than he did. He lived! But man he was hurting, I didn't even know how to run the skidder yet to get him out. You bet your bippy I learned myself real quick, and kept an eye on that boy. He kinda faded out, got scared, gun shy.
It's not if, but when!
Be safe!

 

[forestryworks]

to quote Gary, "look up and look out!"

 

[Ed*L]

to quote Gary, "look up and look out!"

Damn straight!

Last fall I was doing some scouting for deer season. I heard wood breaking close to me. There was a 14" dbh dead elm that had decided to fall. I was only about 50' away from it, definately scared the **** out of me!

Ed

 

[slowp]

When you hear the distinctive cracking noise, it is too late to look up. Run.

 

[Lee Bradley]

Of course, you may run right into it. Generally when its your turn....

 

[treejunkie13]

When the sun is in your favor, the ground is where I keep my eyes when I'm running the saw or doing something to where I can't hear that sound of danger.
Learned the scary way!
Laid out a tree one fine day, pretty tight stand, with obstacles... anyways did my thing, look up around, began marking out logs, back to the bad (unknown), and there it was (that feeling) I noticed a shadow comin at me, spun around saw a hole maple top about 30' or so, and dove out of there. I could feel the breeze it was so close. Instantly I wondered how the chainsaw survived, it laid there in between a crotch, just enuff room, shut it down. And I had to have a seat a minute.

That Maple was in decent shape, no one could have predicted it breaking in half on a calm day without so much as touching it!
Pay Attention!

 

[GASoline71]

to quote Gary, "look up and look out!"

Thanks mang...

That was somethin' one of the old timberfallers on the crew used to say when he had a rookie under his wing...

It usually came with a slap upside the head... "Dammit rook'!!! Look up, look out... you wanna get killed in this business!"

After a very short time... you learned to look skyward up that spar to see what might be rattlin' loose...

Some of the best advice i ever got... (Thanks Buck... R.I.P. )

Gary

 

[poulson01]

Sorry to Frankenstein an old thread but, what's a slimlimb?

 

[2dogs]

You can find info on simlimb on the net I think. Basically it trains the faller to look up while falling a snag. The simlimb is a piece of plastic pipe about 6' long and covered in foam rubber insulation. The limb is hoisted up the tree by a rope and allowed to fall on the faller and random intervals to teach situational awareness. It is a very good prop. A limb falling from 50' up a tree gives you less than 2 seconds to get out of the way. The idea of a spotter yelling and then you reacting just does not work and simlimb easily proves that.

 

[slowp]

And I'm not a faller so when I'm out looking at stuff, I can't be looking up or I'll fall on my face so when I hear that cracking noise, there is no time to look up, gotta run. By the time I move head from looking at ground to looking at sky, it is too late. The small ones sometimes make as loud of a noise as the large ones. That's another bad thing about thinnings, lots of limbs are hung up in the leave trees.

 

[Zodiac45]

That's another bad thing about thinnings, lots of limbs are hung up in the leave trees.

Yep that's the number one problem as I see it and most time with those you get zero warning. No cracking noise, nothing. They're just waiting up there for the right wind or tree motion too jar em loose.

 

[2dogs]

And I'm not a faller so when I'm out looking at stuff, I can't be looking up or I'll fall on my face so when I hear that cracking noise, there is no time to look up, gotta run. By the time I move head from looking at ground to looking at sky, it is too late. The small ones sometimes make as loud of a noise as the large ones. That's another bad thing about thinnings, lots of limbs are hung up in the leave trees.

The simlimb drill is for falling practice, not for walking practice.

Look up, look down, look around is for walking

 

[Philobite]

I've been doing some felling over the past couple weeks on redwoods that average >30"DBH and in the steeps (>40 degrees).

I've got to admit that I'm very respectful and paranoid about widow-makers at all times. I've got a crook in my neck from looking up constantly. It's particularly bad where redwood and tanoak are mixed because the tanoak strip the redwood branches as the redwoods fall and retain the branches and then slowly spit them out over hours and days as the tanoak branches spring back into position... and they hide the widowmakers in the leaves. My policy is to either stay away from the area or to fell the tanoak to get those redwood missiles out of them.

The second thing that is scary is that tanoak are very springy and when a redwood falls through their upper branches, stripping redwood boughs, the tanoak bends over and loads up, just like a catapult! Then BOING! You've got 3-4 missiles flying back at you from 20-30 yards away and 100 feet up! When you're standing on a steep slope it's really hard to get away from the forest that's trying to kill you. So the routine for felling is kind of funny. Once you've buried your wedges in the back-cut and you see the tree start to go, you give a shout, fling your saw and sledge down the hill, and throw yourself after them, but you kind of roll diagonally so you're out of the line of the butt, then you cower behind any available cover until the catapults stop raining down javelins. When it's all over you turn and mourn just how far down that steep slope, and how deeply embedded in the poison oak your heavy saw is.

There are lots of 4" diameter redwood branches impaled in the ground 2'. When I think about what that would do to a body it gives me the heebie-jeebies. Color me yellow, but fear is my friend.

 

[slowp]

Coffee helps!