Jobs gone wrong

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Climbinfool.

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I got to thinking bout the thread "Rigging gone wrong". Years back I was invited to speak at the California Arborist Association diner about Jobs Gone Wrong along with some other folks.

This happen to be in my own yard about ten years ago. Although nothing serious happened, it still cracks me up to think about it.

I had a cluster of Black Oaks in my back yard that I wanted to thin out. Instead of climbing them I decided to just rig the selected ones down from another tree.Setting everything up from the ground, I was ready to have my wife run the Porty and lower down the whole tree while I made the face and back cut. I pulled up tension and handed the rope to my wife and said ready? Yep ! she was good to go. As I was making the back cut the tree came over slowly and was being lowered down a little fast and kind landed in some other trees across the way. No harm done I thought. I looked t her and said, "Everything good?" She nodded and said, "I guess, I didn't feel anything" I thought hmmmmm...

Upon looking at the tree we Just rigged out, something was a little funny.. No rope was tied to it....:lol:.... I cut the wrong tree and everything was still ready to go for the tree I intended to take out... I told her what happened and we must have laughed for fifteen minutes :P

Now I know with all years of tree work in here, there has to be a few jobs gone wrong.... I know I have had my fair share... luckily nothing disastrous though
 
Yeah, couple years back. Crane company took the hit though. Fortunately. The crane owner had told his crew not to use that sling just the day before, their crane, sling and operator. I was the prime so my insurance company paid out and went after the cranes insurance. Crappy day all around
 
How'd the HO take it? That's gotta be an awkward phone call to make. I don't mean to be invasive, just curious as heck.
 
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  • #6
yeah! that's a total bummer....that was a fare size chunk of wood, well actually the looks like the upper half of the tree.
 
Job Gone Wrong

I had just started my first commercial job and was rushing to try to get ahead. I was on my second tree of the whole 400 tree job. It was a white oak tight against an apartment building. I was going to block out the top. Had my notch in, made my back cut and xxxx!!! I forgot to tie the top off! It came down and landed perfectly flat missing everything. Talk about luck. My Brother was my groundie
and he just looked up and shrugged his shoulders.
 
Years ago I was taking down a huge tulip poplar (well east coast huge, like 4') anyways I had told the very upscale customer that when I dropped the log it would make a divot in the lawn, she agreed to this. So we had rigged out the whole canopy and I came down and made my notch and out comes the lady and says she has changed her mind, she doesn't want a divot. So I explain to her that this isn't possible for the same price but offered to do my best. We constructed a crib to dissipate some of the energy by criss crossing the 1' diameter limb wood. I dropped the log slam in the middle of the crib only to see the first 8' by 1' piece snap clean in two and one piece just started flying though the air doing cart wheels. Wouldn't you believe it that sucker went a good 30' and went straight through the roof:|: Obviously she was watching:lol: Ate it on that job:roll:
 
PCTREE said:
Years ago I was taking down a huge tulip poplar (well east coast huge, like 4') anyways I had told the very upscale customer that when I dropped the log it would make a divot in the lawn, she agreed to this. So we had rigged out the whole canopy and I came down and made my notch and out comes the lady and says she has changed her mind, she doesn't want a divot. So I explain to her that this isn't possible for the same price but offered to do my best. We constructed a crib to dissipate some of the energy by criss crossing the 1' diameter limb wood. I dropped the log slam in the middle of the crib only to see the first 8' by 1' piece snap clean in two and one piece just started flying though the air doing cart wheels. Wouldn't you believe it that sucker went a good 30' and went straight through the roof:|: Obviously she was watching:lol: Ate it on that job:roll:
Click to expand...

The things we do to save frikkin grass!
 
I just spent 30 minutes looking but can't find the pictures. I was removing a big fat pine with a huge crown in between two mobile homes in a mobile home park. There was no room for the chipper except out in front of my bucket truck, so I was rigging big leads and craning them out so the crew could have something to do. I rigged one big lead off another, and the upper lead broke. both leads came down on top of two carports (made out of soda cans, but weaker). I ended up paying to replace both carports.
 
Wrong tree out of three. I was supposed to remove two crepe myrtle and leave one. HO stopped to talk to me, I fired up the saw right there after and cut.... GAWWWWWWWWWD Felt like I killed someone. Lady of the house let me slide after the tongue lashing I got from the gentleman of the house.
 
we had a job down in pebble beach some years ago. me, the boss, and a groundie removing a Monterrey pine in the middle of a well established and high end landscape. i got it brushed out and was rigging wood, it was past lunch, i was hungry and tired. well, what happens when your in a hurry? i made my face in a big chunk, checked to see if the boss was ready to rope and made my back cut. i forgot to tie it off. probly 2 1/2' dia x 8' log landed smack in the only clear spot in the entire landscape. i looked at the boss and he said shake it off and keep going. mind you, the whole time weve been roping chunks bigger than i was really comfortable, but the boss wanted big so... i made sure the next piece was tied off and let er rip. snapped the 3/4" bull rope (that was already beat to hell). needless to say, i came down for lunch after that. he swore up and down that i cut the rope when i made my back cut, but i looked at it and it was obvious that it broke at the half hitch. since then, I decide how big i rig, and if i get hungry I stop and i eat.
 
Tucker943 said:
How'd the HO take it? That's gotta be an awkward phone call to make. I don't mean to be invasive, just curious as heck.
Click to expand...

Amazingly well. Took me a minute to figure out what happened because as soon as it left the stump I boomed away, when I looked back it was laying on the roof. Maybe a 1500 pound pick. They were there so the only call was to my insurance agent, when she realized we were going to take care of it she was as fine as one could be in that scenario. Her 1 year old paint got depreciated by $400 so we were both irked that the insurance did that but other wise it all got repaired. We actually had 2 larger oaks yet to take down so we had to get back to work once the knots in my stomach loosened a bit
 
Back when I worked with Asplundh, my old boss had a quirk. Folks were all the time asking us to do stuff outside our field of duty. If they appeared wealthy, though, it's like he felt he had to accommodate them. One day this guy asks him if we can take down this big pine, at least 40' from the primary. We didn't even need to trim it. Boss says okay and sends me up the tree to brush it out. We were going to have to fall the trunk across the new concrete driveway, so once it was brushed out, we piled "cordwood" on both sides of the drive to crib it. When the trunk smacked the pile, it hit one ambitious stick, (prolly 3" x 5')...like a kid in the lunchroom launching a grain of corn off a fork...it flew upward, cartwheeling all the way...through a second floor bathroom window. The cute little batwing shutters were closed, so it stuck through them as well. Time stood still for a second as it sort of balanced there, then fell back out onto the driveway, narrowly missing a new Cadillac in the garage. What capped it all was watching the boss set the saw down, turn to the HO and say, "I was afraid of that!" I laughed til I hurt.:lol: Funny thing is, he wasn't making a dime off the job, and even paid for the window out of his pocket. Oh to impress folks...
 
The job with the primary, that caused me to quit PTS last week... The boss smashed the neighbors fence in his huff to show me what a panzy I am.

Oh and on top of making me quit, Billy went out and looked at another company on Friday... They offered him full time w/ salary. He took it, and is going in to get his last check and quit tomorrow when I get my check.

So losing the only two qualified climbers you got, going completely over budget on the job timewise, and smashing a fence...all in one fell swoop...

Hows that for a job gone wrong.

:LOL:
 
  • Thread Starter Thread Starter
  • #22
For about ten years I ran a 75' Techo. It was Spring time and the Silver maples had just fully leafed out. I was working an intersection pruning a small Black Walnut about 40' and watching over two other crews to my left and right. While bringing my lower boom up and watching the other two crews, a trasformer blew across the street to my left, then one in front of me and another behind me. I looked at the other bucket crew working and they seemed as if nothing was going on. I stopped to look around and to my surprise my lower boom brought two 12 kv phase to phase blowing them apart creating the transformer issue. To make matters worse, it caught the 99 cent store on fire which had faulty wiring from a later investigation. From there it traveled through the main water line and blew out along the street, putting 4 holes in it as if someone had used a cutting torch on it.

After everything had calmed down and I got the situation under control and had a chance to investigate a little I noticed the height of the wires. 12KV only 40 foot high on the pole?. Also, they went diagonally across the intersection and blended right in with the Silver Maples. Still my fault for not seeing them. The city had them re routed and elevated after that...Lucky no one was killed with eight employees running around plus a couple bystanders walking around un aware at the time. Biggest mishap I've ever had and hopefully the last of that kind....
 
There have been a few!

We had to take a branch off this willow over the roof of a multimillion $ house.

Couldn't get machinery in, since there is a pipe in the lawn, part of a heating system for the house where you use heat from the ground and a heat exchanger..

No good riggingpoint, so for taking the farthest part of the branch down, we had to walk on the roof, which was glazed tile.

A bit of sawchips on that and one may as well be walking on ice.

So we rigged a line between the two chimneys to tie off to.

Everything went fine, we blew the residue off the roof with a leafblower and I went up to untie the line between the chimneys, slipped and fell down and broke 3 tiles with my ass:lol:

Fortunately the owner had a stack of spares set aside, and with me having done a bit of roofing once, they were easy to replace:)

P6140060.jpg
 

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I don't know how the second picture got in there and I can't figure out how to remove it!
It is a bowl of mine that is in the Danish museum of wood, but doesn't really belong in this thread, sorry!
 
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  • #25
cool looking bowel. What kind of wood ?
 
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