killer snag from worksafe BC

I have been having a fine time scaring the crap out of my family with my new raccoon call. I am like the Spanish Inquisition, no one ever expects it!

My weapon is surprise, surprise and volume,....my two weapons are.....

Washington State DNR still has a blasting program Willie, might be a fun road trip for you!
 
Jomo said:
What you talkin bout Holmes, it was a flagged hazard tree brought to his sup's attention, who shoulda done his friggin job and supervised the friggin felling with an air horn in case something unexpected and dangerous happened.

Watch the vid again and tell me I'm wrong?

Jomo
Click to expand...
Your wrong , faller 1 only brought it up to attention with faller 2.
This air horn idea of yours is one of the dumbest ideas I've ever heard of.
 
Lmao Willard.

Shit gets wild in the woods on a regular basis. Fallers get injured and killed in BC somewhat regularly, I don't know the stats but know it's enough to make it one of if not the most dangerous occupation there is here.

Second guessing and reviewing and critiquing and whatnot is all good and makes people think and analyze. Truth is the fellow probably had done and survived more hairy shit than most here would ever even consider doing. Bottom line is falling/logging is industry who's point is to produce and make money. If you're the guy who stops and flags every hazard and constantly doesn't get shit done guess how long you'll be employed?
 
Not a logger here at all...but blasting sure makes sense to me.

I checked into blasting beaver dams before the 9-11 madness...approx. 1996, I think. Even then it was way too much trouble to procure and use explosives. I gave up...the beavers won. We shoot them periodically but they have ruined several dams around our lakes.
 
The faller had 3 trees and a snag to watch over all at once when they were going down in just a matter of seconds.
Way too much chit happening all at once, air horn only would confuse the situation even more .
 
The video pretty well comes out and says it. The reason no alternative method or plan was made is money. There is no available tree blasting crew just waiting for a danger snag. Hell other fallers didn't/wouldn't want to stop or lend a hand because it would cost them. And the faller himself was obviously disinclined to seek assistance as he knew it wasn't readily available and wouldn't be a welcome interruption of production. No bull buck or supervisor readily available, because everyone is stretched as thin as the mighty dollar.

A shame the fellow got his ticket punched. RIP.
 
Yah I doubt in that situation the guy would've needed an air horn warning to let him know the shit had hit the fan. Who knows what or how it went down to allow him to have not seen/noticed or be able to get out of the way of the piece of snag but I doubt somebody standing there with an air horn blowing would've helped.

The fellow talked about it the night before with another faller. He obviously was aware that this scenario was dangerous as hell, so would've been being as alert as he could've been.
 
If the piece hadn't come back to kill or injure, or the faller had been far enough away to simply watch unharmed the sequence of events with a quizzical look on his face, people would be saying that it was a good method that he used.
 
My sword instructor always said...."distance is your shield." I agree...proper retreat could have been a game changer for the good.

Air horn...explosive...FFZ is right...boom wins
 
The intricacies of approved sequences for logging are beyond me...I defer to our loggers...who I hold in great esteem. Much respect here for the skills y.all develop and use to such great effect.
 
woodworkingboy said:
If the piece hadn't come back to kill or injure, or the faller had been far enough away to simply watch unharmed the sequence of events with a quizzical look on his face, people would be saying that it was a good method that he used.
Click to expand...

That's what I think too
 
pantheraba said:
The intricacies of approved sequences for logging are beyond me...
Click to expand...

Get government involved or people who want to make hard rules for something that has innumerable variances and the cost of everything goes up and efficiency goes down. Blowing that tree is nice in theory but I don't even know who to call to blow a tree. Ten years ago I researched explosive training and couldn't even get an explosives manufacturer to call me back with info.
 
Sgriff said:
That's what I think too
Click to expand...

The woods are just flat-out dangerous. But everytime theres a serious injury, the beaurocracies that be are all, "Well, that didn't work... What could we have done dirrerently?.... blah, bla la BLAH, Bla BLAH, bla..." ad nauseaum.
 
I agree Jed. I also agree with " it all comes down to money". He probably knew that there was a safer way but would cost him or the co money. I don't like to say what could've been done different because I'm not completely familiar with real logging and more importantly, I wasn't there to see the whole scenario.
 
The woods are only as dangerous as the logger makes it. Five days a week, months on end working in the rain,heat. Flat out repetitive work and if you don't have your head screwed on straight then its screw the regulations and you're going be swinging dutchmen and dominoing all you want and then you'll qo down quick. .
I think the money bit was just a lame excuse. Just leave the skinny limb locked stick and snag and keep working the block. Let the super look after it.
 
Apparently no super around or at least not available to the extent that the faller could get on job site consultation with such an individual. The investigation report into the incident paints a picture of more than the faller's insufficient discretion. Even if you see that as the main cause of the unfortunate accident, the environment that the company had established, with insufficient supervision and poor safety guidelines in place for potentially dangerous situations, can be said to have been wholly inadequate and created an unsafe atmosphere where things like what did happen, could much more easily occur. It seems well proven that people in a lot of professions need to be fairly constantly informed about safety. Isn't logging considered to be the number one or two most dangerous occupation. The only all knowing and all seeing individual on their own accord that I have ever heard about so far is God.

Wonder if that company was fined? It wasn't the first or last logger to die working for that outfit. Apparently that slab shot back around sixty feet to hit the man. He wasn't a young man either, at 59 he must have been experienced.

http://www2.worksafebc.com/topics/accidentinvestigations/IR-PrimaryResources.asp?ReportID=37332
 
I'm telling ya westcoast logging and falling is some dangerous shit. Pretty much constantly, and it's only getting worse as the cream was skimmed long ago, then the rest of the cup was emptied, and now we're scraping at the grinds stuck to the bottom. All while big business is desperately trying to 'enhance' their profitability.
 
The fallers don't seem to be the only folks getting hurt either, Squish. No doubt you've seen it. Looking through the accident reports, it's a number of activities within the trade as a whole where people get hurt or worse. Some real unlucky stuff too. WorkSafe BC has a lot of scary tales to tell.
 
All day long we do thing that could be done safer and less productively. Logging is a roll of the dice, from what I know of it. Paid by the board-foot.
 
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