Thanks for all your input and sorry for the late response. Tom D. presented an EHAP workshop on Friday and I was busy with organizing all of the final details for that .
Funny that this thread appeared at the same time as the 'Barber Chair' thread. The events seem to be very similar, with very minor differences. But, I know no more about that incident than what everyone else has seen here on the Buzz.
For the tree shown in this thread, however, I was on the scene. The tree went east. Noone was hurt. The tree was on the outskirts of a condominium complex, on the backside of a detention pond. The only damage was to the far side of the fence that encompassed the detention pond. Two sections of the fence were knocked down, but were easily straightened and put back up. One 2X4 had to be replaced.
I take the blame for the tree going awry. The faller/climber has ten or fifteen years experience, is a good, up to date climber, but has been with our company for only about six weeks. I could have changed or corrected any detail at any point in the felling procedure, but this seemed like a good place to see what the faller could do with a problem tree.
This is long. The salient points are:
1) reducing the canopy was planned, but then not carried out (to save time???).
2) the pull line was set around the center branch of the tree and pulled directly N. The line could have been positioned around the entire canopy and been anchored more to the west to offset the canopy weight to the east.
3) the notch seems to have been made with no or only a minimal investigation of the condition of the base of the tree. There was ivy covering the stump after the tree was on the ground ( I had to remove it to take the pictures) and the faller had no idea that the tree was hollow until after he made the notch.
4) there seems to have been no further investigation made of the base of the tree after the notch was made. There was ivy covering the stump after the tree was on the ground ( I had to remove it to take the pictures).
5) the back cut was made incorrectly. There was almost twice as much holding wood on the compression side as on the tension side.
The tree was in an unkempt area that had trees/brush/grass about six feet high. The ground sloped up from the base of the tree towards the intended line of fall, so the faller couldn't see his lay and the people on the pull line could not see the faller. The tree was a beech, dead, no leaves on it, but it still had its smaller twigs. The trunk was upright, no lean, and no external signs of being hollow. The canopy was light to light/moderate. The canopy did not have a lean, but it was one-sided to the east because of other surrounding trees on the west. The scaffold structure had three main limbs (not quite big enough to be called leads)--one upright, one very slightly to the east and one more to the east.
There was a fence about fifteen feet to the west of the trunk of the tree and this ran parallel to the intended lay and continued well past the work area. There was also a fence about 15 feet to the east of the trunk of the tree, but this ran parallel to the lay for only about 30 feet, then turned about 45* and headed NNE. If the tree fell as intended, the trunk would fall N, between the two fences and the canopy would land beyond where the east side fence opened up. There was enough room that even if the tree strayed to the east a little bit it still would not hit the fence.
When he had looked at the tree the day before, the climber had planned to climb the tree and remove some of the limbs on the east side (he could have climbed the beech itself or there was an oak to the south that had a good tie-in spot to work out of). This day he had just successfully felled another, slightly larger tree (a dead oak) that had been just up hill from the beech. After that tree (the oak) was on the ground I looked at the stump and I questioned how he had performed his backcut. The feller disputed my suggestions for doing it differently, we chipped the limbs and then moved on to the beech.
The climber said that he had decided to fell the beech whole, rather than climb and reduce the east side of the canopy. He set the pull line on the branch that was directly over the trunk of the tree. This gave some pull to the trunk of the tree, but did little or nothing to offset the lean of the rest of the canopy. I asked, but he did not want to anchor the pull line any further to the west.
The feller made his notch and then came up the hill to check the lay. He said that the tree was hollow, but the notch was right on target. I went down to look at the notch. The brush was so high that it was difficult to tell exactly where the notch was pointing. It seemed to me to be just a very small bit to the west of the intended lay, but I didn't think that there was any danger (or even any chance) that the tree would pull too far to the west. I still wanted the feller to proceed in whatever way he wanted, so the only point I made was that, at this point, we had to fell the tree. We were not going to try to climb it now to reduce the canopy.
We tensioned the pull line, and the feller started the backcut. The tree moved just slightly towards the intended lay then went east. Almost due east. Far enough east that, when the tree was on the ground the pull line was tight. The small fibers on the top of the splinter in the second attachment show the direction of fall--almost at a right angle to the intended lay.
Its hard to tell the relative sizes of each side of the hinge from the photos, but the east (compression) side was almost twice as wide as the tension (west) side (the second attachment shows the east side by itself). I tried to explain to thje faller that he should have set a small hinge on the compression side first and then proceeded to the tension side, but he disagreed and disputed any point I tried to make. He said "You'll never convince me..." so I just left it at that. Talking with him then would not have met with anything except resistance, but I know I need to address it later.
Removing the ivy and sounding the trunk before making the notch would have helped the faller see the condition of the trunk and may have made him change his mind about dropping the tree whole. Removing the ivy and sounding the trunk after the notch was made may have made him change the pull line or make the back cut differently. Boring the back cut to establish the hinge may have helped the trees direction of fall,. but only if the faller had established a correct hinge. Setting a wedge on the compression side may have helped (again with a correct hinge), but I think there was more of a chance of the tension wood breaking rather than the compression wood collapsing.
The wood on the tension side was decayed, and I don't know that any or all of these techniques would have set the tree exactly on the intended lay. But the tree would have been a lot closer. I wasn't surprised that the tree hit the fence and it didn't really upset me. What bothered me was that the faller was adamant that he had done everything correctly. The stump was still sitting in our yard when Tom visited, a week after the event occured. Once emotions settle down I'll look for other sites/jobs where we can cut and examine trees and stumps.
