A near miss for a Darwin Award.
One of my crews relayed this story to me, it happend around 3-21-03. The crew was taking down a tree for a local construction company. To save money the construction outfit wanted us to splash it and they would do the clean-up. They had a chipper and a couple of guys to shag brush. During the take down the chipper became jammed, it was an older Brush Bandit- disc type (still with the original short in-feed hopper). Although the construction worker (who had many years of treework experience) turned off the chipper, he did not wait for the disc to stop turning. The plug was a twisted piece of wood stuck between the disc and the in-feed rollers. He was using a 5' steel crowbar to try and open the rollers and pop out the piece of wood. Yep, you guessed it, the crowbar contacted the rotating disc, the impact was violent and bent the solid steel bar into a 'U' shape. The handle end slammed the worker in the head and face, cutting him on the eye-brow, knocking him to the ground and sending his hard hat flying. It is not known how much of the impact he was spared by the hard hat, but he still require a trip to the hospital to get stiched up. The chipper of course was in need of repair before it could be used again.
Always allow moving parts to come to rest prior to working on the machinery. Why the company never got an upgraded/lengthened in-feed hopper I do not know.
Complacency it can kill!
One of my crews relayed this story to me, it happend around 3-21-03. The crew was taking down a tree for a local construction company. To save money the construction outfit wanted us to splash it and they would do the clean-up. They had a chipper and a couple of guys to shag brush. During the take down the chipper became jammed, it was an older Brush Bandit- disc type (still with the original short in-feed hopper). Although the construction worker (who had many years of treework experience) turned off the chipper, he did not wait for the disc to stop turning. The plug was a twisted piece of wood stuck between the disc and the in-feed rollers. He was using a 5' steel crowbar to try and open the rollers and pop out the piece of wood. Yep, you guessed it, the crowbar contacted the rotating disc, the impact was violent and bent the solid steel bar into a 'U' shape. The handle end slammed the worker in the head and face, cutting him on the eye-brow, knocking him to the ground and sending his hard hat flying. It is not known how much of the impact he was spared by the hard hat, but he still require a trip to the hospital to get stiched up. The chipper of course was in need of repair before it could be used again.
Always allow moving parts to come to rest prior to working on the machinery. Why the company never got an upgraded/lengthened in-feed hopper I do not know.
Complacency it can kill!
