15 years of doing tree work and had my first property damage today.

96coal449 said:
If the building had a faulty ground why was your boss liable for the fire? A storm could have broken a branch, sent it into the wires, and the same thing would have happened. If the building was grounded properly there would only have been fried leaves. Am I missing something?
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A tort attorney speaking at a class I attended explained that there's a "Pie" of liability in most tort cases, and every responsible party gets a slice, based on their degree of participation in the loss. In this case, the owner of the building might not have collected as much from the tree service's insurance as they might have, due to their own negligence in not bringing the wiring up to code.
 
Man I've killed so much shit in my day it's comical. Fences. Driveways siding electrical roof brick wall. Corner of a house. Chipper blah blah blah. Just like everyone else. The longer you're at it the more you learn. I had to bail out of a bucket truck 6' off the ground as a veteran cut through his hinge wood and cut a house in half almost hitting the boom
 
Dropped a tree on my old chuck and duck once. Tree was a a bit taller than it appeared.
Chipper hopped about two feet off ground. Only significant damage was a smallish crack in the drum housing...for which I received a $6000 repair estimate from the dealer. A friend of a friend welded it up beautifully and replaced the head bearings for under a grand.

Also bounced a limb across a service drop to a house that wasn't triplex but three ratty old seperate wires...Fried lotsa electronic gadgets in the guys house...incl. control panel on stove, furnace thermostat etc. The kinda stuff non profit days are made of.
 
All this talk about wires ..... I remember one more. Row of young spruce trees down the side of a house and property line. Say we're working about 25-30' from the house. Largest tree was about 16''DBH and 50' tall. All lower limbs were removed previously some time ago. This occurred early in my tree career.
I worked with a cert. arborist so I could learn some of the new school trade. Brought his mini skid with the Implemex grapple and winch. Tells me we're going to pull them all over and feed em all to the chipper with the skidsteer. Shouts to me before I touch the back cut on the 1st tree, "It's gonna wanna barber chair. Cut fast .... right through it!" So I have my newish 440 mag with a fresh chain. No problem ...... I thought. He put's a bit more tension on the line as I start cutting. When it went over I had an inch of hinge left, straight and even with my face notch. It fell 45* to the left and took out the service drop. My guess is his winch didn't keep up with the pull and the top followed its weight. Sucked that it was my job and I did it for my friend's elderly mother.
 
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First summer as a climber I worked for this company that was all about speed and less about quality and training. I show up to do some bucket work clearing some medium sized cottonwood along a county ditch (medium sized here is about 2-4 feet dbh). First top I cut had some tips land in the dry ditch. There were a bunch of county guys doing the clean up and we were just contracted to get them down. The head honcho county guy said everything needed to stay out of the ditch, so I started rigging anything that was leaning that way. About three hours later I get a call from my boss wondering what is taking so long? There were about 12-15 trees marked for removal and I couldn't believe they expected that down in 3 hours. There were propane tanks, a few outbuildings, and now this dry ditch I wasn't supposed to hit. I get off the phone (still in the bucket) and now the county crew is starting to look impatient with how long the rigging is taking. I'm pissed and start to rush. I'm about halfway done blocking a tree and I'm pretty clear of all the targets, so I zip down about 15 feet of this cottonwood and put a snap cut in. Probably about 34 inches where I made the cut, I go back up and push on the block with my bucket (hey I saw the boss do it last week, must be safe). I pushed for about a foot before it slid off the side of the bucket and rocked back and snapped. It landed dead center on the chip box of the boom truck. If anyone on here is familiar with cottonwood you know what a 15 foot chunk of 34" wood weighs..... It fell about 45' and sounded like a bomb going off. The chip box looked like discarded condom wrapper. Well it turns out my boss had only bid three trees and the county marked a bunch more after he left. Don't ever rush boys and girls!
 
Several years ago, we felled a poplar stem on to the main service wires in cottage country. Yanked down the lines, snapped a hydro pole in half, which had a transformer on it, and that got smashed on the ground as well. Ouch!!! Took 10 hydro workers and six trucks to get the power restored but they got it all fixed up the same day. I had to make an insurance claim on that one. First one ever.
 
Canopy Gorilla said:
First summer as a climber I worked for this company that was all about speed and less about quality and training. I show up to do some bucket work clearing some medium sized cottonwood along a county ditch (medium sized here is about 2-4 feet dbh). First top I cut had some tips land in the dry ditch. There were a bunch of county guys doing the clean up and we were just contracted to get them down. The head honcho county guy said everything needed to stay out of the ditch, so I started rigging anything that was leaning that way. About three hours later I get a call from my boss wondering what is taking so long? There were about 12-15 trees marked for removal and I couldn't believe they expected that down in 3 hours. There were propane tanks, a few outbuildings, and now this dry ditch I wasn't supposed to hit. I get off the phone (still in the bucket) and now the county crew is starting to look impatient with how long the rigging is taking. I'm pissed and start to rush. I'm about halfway done blocking a tree and I'm pretty clear of all the targets, so I zip down about 15 feet of this cottonwood and put a snap cut in. Probably about 34 inches where I made the cut, I go back up and push on the block with my bucket (hey I saw the boss do it last week, must be safe). I pushed for about a foot before it slid off the side of the bucket and rocked back and snapped. It landed dead center on the chip box of the boom truck. If anyone on here is familiar with cottonwood you know what a 15 foot chunk of 34" wood weighs..... It fell about 45' and sounded like a bomb going off. The chip box looked like discarded condom wrapper. Well it turns out my boss had only bid three trees and the county marked a bunch more after he left. Don't ever rush boys and girls!
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Great story, @Canopy Gorilla! Thanks for sharing it. A million ways to be set up for an accident.

Welcome to the TreeBuzz forum! I think you are going to like it here.

Tim
 
Years ago when I was still working for the power company full time, doing trees evenings and weekends, I had a gentleman call from the next county to take down a sweet gum for him. Looked it over, pretty much bombs away except for a single phase #4 aluminum primary and neutral on one side that could be close on a limb or two. Everything was going great, we had several neighbors come and ask us to look at their trees before we left. Then I got to the side where the primary was. I was planning to tip tie but asked my groundie to eyeball a limb to see if it would clear if I just it hinged down. "Plenty of room, let her rip". I hinged it down and cleared the primary just fine but the tip barely brushed the neutral which was as slack and sloppy as a wet rope. And it bounced. Right up into the primary. "BOOM", the branch line fuse on the next pole blew and put the whole neighborhood who had been admiring my slick tree skills in the dark. The worst part (besides my bruised ego) was that it was not the same company I worked for so needless to say, I went in the hole on that job. I never did hear back from the neighbors either.
 
15 years? I dented a chainlink fence top rail on my first removal. Chunking down, sure enough, a 3' piece hit the ground at the wrong angle, bounded off doing cartwheels, and dented the fence.

Few years later, I dented another piece of fencing and stripped the gutters off of a house with the same piece. Thankfully, the homeowner was a landlord who was gutting the house and planned to replace the gutters anyway.
 
I broke a guardrail once clearing dead ash from aside a highway. Flagger force was really late that day and I was rushing. Cleared the guard rail with the first several tops, but man that top that hit sheered several bolts and the intact rail fell to ground level. After that we had a little more room to play and turns out fixing the guard rail is pretty easy with a mini and a quick run to the hardware store.
 
Used the bucket to rig a good sized cottonwood down to a flopable totem pole. Had the notch off just a smidge, tree went exactly where the notch was pointed and grazed a fire hydrant. Hydrant had been dead vertical when we started. It was about 10° out of dead vertical when we cleaned up and high tailed it out of there! Never heard what happened, if anything.
 
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