Tree worker pulled into chipper

Jeff said:
I'll give you the whole story, just to answer any and all questions at once:

I was up in the bucket and had just rigged down a decent sized branch (ground guys lowered it with the porta-wrap). They untied the rope, fed the butt end in the chipper (Morbark M15R) and apparently failed to get the rope clear of all the brush being pulled into the chipper (I wasn't watching them by then as I'd turned back to the tree). Out of the corner of my eye I saw the rope jump, the remaining tree spar shake and heard the CMI block screaming it was spinning so fast. I would guess the entire 150', 5/8" line disappeared completely in less than 3 seconds. WAY too fast to comprehend what was going on until long after it was all over. Chipper didn't even flinch. It was still blowing rope chunks and fluff out the chute, as a lot of it wasn't heavy enough to throw like wood chips. I came down, shut the chipper down normally and checked it over. Other than a few rope fluffies still in the discharge chute there was no evidence of what had just happened. Nothing wrapped around the drum or drum bearings, nothing caught in feed wheels, just a big pile of shredded fluff in the chip truck.

The 2 things that scared me the most about this were: A) how UNBELIEVABLY fast it happened. From start to finish, no human could have possibly reacted until it was over, and B) how fast that rope was moving. Like I said, that block was screaming! If I had been anywhere in line with the rope, I can just imagine the tail of the rope tying itself, like Indiana Jones whip, around the boom, my neck, or anything else it could whip around as it came thru the block.

I'm reluctant to admit this, but this wasn't the first time I'd witnessed anything like this. Several years prior, (with an entirely different crew) the ground guys feed the end of the steel winch cable into their Bandit 15" drum. Same sort of result, just a little slower. Somehow the brush grabbed ahold of the end of the winch cable, pulled it in the feed wheels, and it then sucked all the cable off the winch drum and into the chipper until it had emptied the winch drum. I think it broke the cable off of where it attaches to the winch drum, but I'm not positive. Good bang when the hook on the end of the cable went thru, and some metal munching sounds as it ate the cable, but again, didn't slow it down, didn't wrap around anything, just very suddenly they didn't have any cable on the winch. The debris in the chip box from that adventure looked like giant sized steel wool.
Click to expand...
Great response Jeff. Thanks
 
Last Friday during our safety meeting our lead climber revealed some wicked rope burn around his neck, looked like he was hanged. Anyway apparently Hobbs was runnin really fast and he felt something brush his back and without enough reaction time it wrapped around his neck. Didn't see it happen but he's ok.
 
Jeff said:
I'm reluctant to admit this, but this wasn't the first time I'd witnessed anything like this.
Click to expand...

Don't be reluctant, it's communication like this that gives everyone the opportunity to learn and keep safe.

I admit I've underestimated the importance of clearing ropes out of the path of brush until now. From what you wrote I can see how incredibly easily rope could get dragged into a chipper. From now on I'll be keeping all loose rope bagged and exposed lines short: either of those incidents could have resulted in loss of a tree workers' limbs or worse.
 
I went old school and redirected the rigging line through a smallish crotch above me with a large piece and being a bit pissed off plus feeling the pinch cause the crane was coming I didn't back up the rigging point and the small crotch failed so I wore the load which settled in the inner arm/ elbow area.
lazy climbing comes at a cost. would hate this to happen to my neck.
 
Last edited:
I've had the rigging line go around my throat before and it's not a pleasant experience. I was still fairly new to climbing and was rigging out a 300lb chunk of giant fucking weed...I mean A. negundo, when the piece swung the opposite direction I anticipated and the rope got around my neck. I didn't fully strangle me, but it did make breathing harder and to make matters worse for me the groundie's first thought was to let the piece run to the ground to get the weight off me. Got some rope burn to the neck and shoulder before I was able to tell him to just hold the piece and let me get untangled.

I can also think of one occasion where I had saw in hand prepared to cut my climb line because it had got tangled in some brush being dragged to the chipper and no one on the ground noticed until they were just about to feed the brush through.
 
Boomslang said:
I can also think of one occasion where I had saw in hand prepared to cut my climb line because it had got tangled in some brush being dragged to the chipper and no one on the ground noticed until they were just about to feed the brush through.
Click to expand...
I have a climbing mate who had that happen and after speaking to me about the experience of being dragged out of the tree there is not much more to give me the willies than working close to the chipper with my ropes and I watch em' like a hawk.
 
Stihlmadd said:
I went old school and redirected the rigging line through a smallish crotch above me with a large piece and being a bit pissed off plus feeling the pinch cause the crane was coming I didn't back up the rigging point and the small crotch failed so I wore the load which settled in the inner arm/ elbow area.
lazy climbing comes at a cost. would hate this to happen to my neck.
Click to expand...

Thanks for posting that, Stihlmadd.

Tim
 
Stihlmadd said:
I have a climbing mate who had that happen and after speaking to me about the experience of being dragged out of the tree there is not much more to give me the willies than working close to the chipper with my ropes and I watch em' like a hawk.
Click to expand...

This has me thinking that the thing to do in such situations would be to pull the tail of the rope up until any part of the rope is unreachable by the groundies. I don't work as a pro arb, and therefore don't have as good an appreciation of the time pressure most feel on the job, as a result. Maybe it would just take too much time to operate that way consistently, but like they say, if something can happen, it will happen.

The goal is to make it impossible to have it happen. A side benefit is that you can probably relax more with the rope pulled up, and concentrate on cutting wood, instead of having your attention divided by the need to protect yourself from the inattentive groundies.

Tim
 
TimBr said:
to pull the tail of the rope up until any part of the rope is unreachable by the groundies
Click to expand...
Tim, this is something I often grapple with mentally. While I've always drilled the groundies about respecting my rope and keeping an eye on it, it is somewhat relaxing having it pulled up with me, knowing they aren't getting it dirty or feeding it into the chipper. The problem it, they use the tail quite often: Sending me up water bottles, dropped hand saws, replacement chokers when we're speedlining without a haulback, a different chainsaw when I need either a longer bar or a gassed up one after a lot of cutting, or the working end of the rigging line when I'm so far away from the block that they can't swing it to me. In certain circumstances, such as when I'm worried about a big piece grabbing it or if I'm working directly above the chipper, I'll pull it up. But generally, for the reasons listed, I need to let it hang. Anyone else have these problems?
 
Jeff said:
But generally, for the reasons listed, I need to let it hang. Anyone else have these problems?
Click to expand...

Where would you put it if you pull it up? It's a bit hard to carry around. Besides, you don't want anything catching it on the way down, either.

The best place for a long unused section of your rope is tucked into a rope bag, I think.

I'm just trying to go to having one SRT ascent line and using the other end of the same rope for DdRT (just so I can use both my uni and ZZ :D) like Yoyoman does. That means I need all my climbing rope out of the bag and lying on the ground next to the trunk. That's the second safest place for it, I reckon. Of course redirects can mean the rope is out anywhere in the canopy at times. One way to minimize the loose rope there is to have different size ropes for different trees so we're not using 200 foot ropes for apple trees. Just my thoughts...
 
Jeff said:
generally, for the reasons listed, I need to let it hang. Anyone else have these problems?
Click to expand...
pretty much sop as well. I have developed a style or method to redirect the climbing line away from the action as much as possible but that will only last so long on a takedown.
every time I see my lines caught by a moving piece of fluff I yell out about are you taking me to the chipper again but it happens so many times during the average job because not many grounds people have been trained to check the bundle as you leave the LZ to be sure nothing has hooked up into the bundle on the drag.
once again it comes down to spending the time on good training and unfortunately it aint my circus nor my monkeys.
I hope I am not derailing threads left right and centre. sometimes I do wonder what constitutes a contribution versus a derail.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

New threads New posts

Back
Top Bottom