Chipper Death

Devil_Dave

Devil_Dave

Location
The Garden State
A landscaper was killed in NJ on tuesday after a chipper blade hit him in the stomach. The employee opened the cover surrounding the blades while the machine was still running. He was trying to dislodge debris in the chute. This employee had 10 years on the job. Was this poor training on the companies part or just another case of complacancy.
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There are probaly many reasons for the accident. INadequate training and caution are probably high on the list.

This is an accident that I'm too familiar with. I opened up the chute while the disc ws moving and got bopped. The blow whattered my Peltor helmet, tweaked my nose, cracked the bone under my eye brow and cut the palm of my right hand where I was holding the handle. I was in the hospital for two days. There isn't a chipping day, and many others, that I dont' think back and try to figure out why I did such a stupid thing. AND I KNOW BETTER!!! When a buddy in town heard about my accident he called because he couldn't believe that I would do that. He knows how safety conscious I am and it was incongruous for him to believe the grapevine.

Believe me, I've spent many hours troubling over my actions. There is no reason that I didn't know how stupid I was that day. The only thing I can think of is what Kurt Vonnegut calls "bad chemicals" in my brain. I'm not talking about drugs or alchohol because I haven't used any for years. It is a combination of chemicals that were produced to over ride the proper electro-chemical reactions that helped me survive up until that day. Some poeple think of this as a "Brain Fart". For me, that scatological referance is too tame.

Tom
 
I too wonder how I stuck my thumb into a pruning shear I let idle improperly on a cold day and removed part of the tip. Or threw my fogged safety glasses on the grownd when I was removing a single silver maple limb on a cold, rainy, late fall day. The immidiatly took the terminal bud of a sprout in my eye. Been over six years now and the thing still does not feel right.
 
Working on a side hill and throwing brush downhill into the chute a young fellow jumped off the bank into the chut and began kicking in the lose sticks and fine brush. Drum chipper, no guards. Just finishing up you know! He seen the look on my face and suddenly realized where he was at and what he was doing. I shut the job down and imediatly had a safety meeting with the crew. The kid was so upset he became ill. Talk about a brain fart. It scared the hell out of everyone.
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Boy, chippers just dont care what they do, do they.I have seen some pretty stupid things go on while people are running chippers and it is no wonder there are not not more injuries.I was changing knives in a xp250 bandit one day and that wheel weighs about nine hundred lbs.I was rotating the wheel slowly with my hand on the pattle wheel when it caught between the outside cover and the pattle. It was not a screem or just ouch! but some very loud and profound language.It caught me on the nuckle and it still hurts a little on cold days.Chipper saftey is an important issue and should be highly addressed from time to time even with the older crew members. I have seen chips fly fifty yards down the street in the oposite direction of the truck.Luckily no cars or pedestrians where pelted. All because it was not checked before starting. I'm sure we have all done stupid things concerning chipper safety, and hopefully its never resulted in anything seriouse.
 
On the lighter side. Greg you're right. Chippers don't care what they eat. After a mornings work of line clearance trimming at a private residence I pulled the chipper into position to do the clean up. I started the engine and let it warm for a few minutes. Chute was up and closed and the crew was getting ready to run the brush through. Putting on their gloves, safety glasses, hearing protection. Everybody was ready, chute still closed, I enguaged the drum. It started revving and all of a sudden, ca-chunk, ca-chunk. It didn't sound right and got everyones attention. Especially one fellow. Who put his lunch box in the chute that morning before heading out to the job. He had chipped beef for lunch.
The morel to the story: Always check chipper chute before enguaging drum!
 
On another note. I wasn't there first hand on this one, but a crew out of our yard was sent to do a Xmas tree clean-up for the city of Santa Rosa. You know, the left over Xmas trees that didn't sell. A paved lot with a bunch of orphaned Xmas trees ready to run through the grinder. Not far into the job a main power cord that was used to light the place at night got introduced to the drum and the extensions, lights and all went through. There was immediate panic and everyone run for cover to avoid getting tangled in the feed. City of Santa Rosa wanted the company to pay for the damages, but nothing came of that. It was a courtesy job. All fun and giggles after said and done. Though again the chipper don't care what it eats. There was room for a more serious accident and everyone let out a sigh of relief there wasn't.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">quote:</font><HR> Anyone else still using a drum chipper? <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

We have five Altec drum chippers. Faster than the Bandit 250XP I ran with the City, but
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those things are scary. No second chances.

Louie Hampton
 
My first chipper was a '62 Asplundh Whisper Chipper. How can they, with good conscience, still put that name on those ear breakers? I had the knives sharpened once to many times and a blade slipped out of the pocket. Stopped the machine NOW!!! Ka boom...Turned out safe though. Chewed the anvil, cracked the knife and rolled the edge of the knive pocket on the drum. Nothing flew out of the chute infeed or outfeed.

Can't say I miss using ol' Chuck and Duck!

When I had my Bandit the anvil came off the bolts and got sucked into the disc compartment. Sounded terrible and the crew ran for the hills! I did a belly crawl to the chipper and reached up to disengage the clutch and turn off the motor. When I did, the clanging turned into a couple of loud clunks. The anvil had gone around inside the disc box a few times then got spit into the chips. That was scary! Poor design. They had 5/8" adjusting slots and used 1/2" bolts. Even with washers under the bolts, the anvil got pulled through. I made a new anvil and put in 5/8" bolts.

Tom
 
I very nearly had an 8" scaffold plate embedded in my skull a few years ago with a drum chipper. I was walking past the front of the truck being chipped into (no helmet on)when I heard a god awful noise that made me duck and put my hands on my ears. One of the lads had picked up a handful of gravel and the scaffold plate with some small twigs and placed it in the chipper, despite being told only to chip the long branches a few at a time (it was a development site). When I turned round with a questioning glance, the supervisor was white! He said " Let me show you what nearly took your head off ". He walked over the street and picked up the plate, took it back to where I was standing and showed me the scuff marks out of the alloy body right next to where I was standing (we had side boards but no roof). I worry about using chip boxes without roofs in built up areas! The guy got the sack shortly after - he had quite a catalogue of disasters.

Since then, drum chippers have been outlawed in the UK, but there are still a few about. We have new legislation for chipper safety bars as well - Knee and side bars with an electric cut off are now required. The best ones work really well. The worst ones are too easy to disconnect - then theres no protection at all!

At one firm I worked for, we hired out a PTO drum chipper that came back with a hole in the feed chute. Apparantly, the bolts on the knives had sheared, and they ripped right through! Luckily the guy had turned away to pick up some more brash at the time!

We also used to use a Gibbs woodchuck - that could blast chip for yards - one job we were all a little bored and ended up having a fight every time we past on the way to the chipper. This went on for about 20 minutes, and we weren't concentrating on the job. The chute had dropped off and we had been plastering the neighbours roof, the guy had to switch the machine off mid-wrestling champs final to get our attention! It took a while to clean out the gutters. We hired that machine out to a council, and it came back with lumps of flesh in the chute. Some guy had decided to climb in the feed hopper and swing on the brace bar to force some twigs through. Luckily for him it chomped off his foot and spat him out. With a hydraulic feed it would have been much worse.
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[ October 03, 2002: Message edited by: MrPez ]
 
I was removing a parkway tree, cut and fly. While the guys where chipping the brush into a vermeer 1800 they fed my rope into the chipper. It pulled me out of the tree. One guy on the ground noticed and reversed the feed wheeles slowly releasing my rope. Need lessto say I came down and we had alittle chat. The worse part is that we had a safety meeting on chipper use that morning!!!!!!That was the closest I've ever come to getting injured while in a tree.
 
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