soil failure

sotc

Dormant hero!!
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Dec 6, 2005
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So. Oregon
heres a pine that fell on a house and pinned a old man in his bed. he broke his pelvis and i beleive thats all! the firemen said his soft bed probably saved his life. they bucked the log off at either end of the room and jacked it up off him, then set it back down! we cleared the brush out today and a logger drug the logs out with a grapple skidder.
 
Wow, poor guy! I see that all the time, but not usually cutting a home in half. Whutta shame! :(

I wonder how long he was pinned under it? I bet he'll never live within range of THAT ever happening again!
 
Good pictures, Willie. What a mess. A broken pelvis is bad enough...they can produce serious massive internal bleeding, shock and death...it's lots worse than your usual normal broken bone.

Hope he makes it OK.
 
Man, bad luck. Sometimes hard for an old guy to recover from an injury like that.

Steve, old for sotc could be 50. :lol: I could see an 80 year old man having a hard time recovering. I hope he heals up fast, whatever his age.


sotc, in the first picture you can see the ground was saturated with water, then in another picture, the trunk looks like it is split with mole spores on it. That would indicate some stress to the tree, no? Yet when you get to the pictures of them bucking the wood, it looks solid as all get out. :\:

Did you do any inspections of the remaining trees?
 
The front that is currently hitting the coast is the tail end of a larger one that wreaked destruction througout the state. Lot's of storm damage to clean up right now. Willies pic is typical of what's out there.
 
I heard the High Sierras got pounded as well. Nice boost for winter biz there SOTC:D
 
I heard the High Sierras got pounded as well. Nice boost for winter biz there SOTC:D

I don't think anyone hopes for that type of biz. Least we don't when the prevailing factor is a hurricane. Just rather not have a hurricane and prune as if one is on the way. You know, preventative stuff.
 
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i actually do like storm work, its more intense and a change of pace and people are so glad your there to help.
yes gigi he was 45 years old. haha no he was 75!
the pine was solid, the roots showed some root rot which is typical as the tree was growing 70 feet from the rogue river and typicaly is "feet wet" all the time. the soil is to saturated, if you look at the root ball youll see that if it were to set back down it would be halfway out of the hole. as it was going over the whole root ball shifted back
 
GiGi. I think that your "mole spores" are lichens=harmless and your "split" was just a limb. (Actually an old secondary leader that got left behind as the tree grew)
 
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yes thats lichen your seeing there in the 3rd pic along with a bifurcation. the 4th pic shows 1 of the tops has been bucked off an drug out leaving the other
 
I don't know much about pines because around here they are transplants,not native.That said it seems to me they are shallow rooted trees.I've seen many including one of my own blow the roots out of the ground from a wind storm.

It doosn't take much to pop one out with a dozer.I used to shove over 16 inch pines ,no problem.A 12 inch oak required a whole lot more digging.Fact is I've broken them clean off but the roots stayed.
 
Could have been the house was recently built? I'd expect the roots to be weakened if so, root rot or no. Pines sure don't like wet soil though. I understand they're one of the very few genus with a true tap root, which not only enable access to water deep undergound but also makes for one hell of an anchor. If water is too close to the surface, the tap root doesn't grow very deep and the tree is more likely to uproot.
 
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the river is only 40 feet away and 4-6 feet lower than the tree. also the house has been there for years and is 70 feet away from where the tree used to be.
 
I was told by an Ohio state forrester that the reason that pines do not do well in these parts is the fact they are mountain trees.

They do get large but not nearly so as a western grown mountain pine/fir. That deal of a wind blowing the roots out of the ground is usually what does them in.

When a big wind comes up in winter after the leaves are off the hardwoods ,unsheilded the poor old pine acts like sail.Over it goes,the hardwoods just sway a tad bit.
 
Here are some pics of a straight up rootball/soil shear. These trees have suffered a lot of construction damage for the drain system.
 
2 hours later all done, and no smashing of the caps! There was no rot present on these roots, It's just been raining alot. Pretty much every day ice water is running down a guys back.
 
I guess so the horizontal pipes under ground can be cleaned, This new devo has a lot of drainage problems.
 
Those caps could be for checking the flow of a septic system of some type designs . Some systems run laterals in both directions from the tank which can be altered by positioning a gate swing valve on the discharge end. If one side shows slow flow the discharge can be shifted until the previous side has a chance to "perk" out . By the looks of the different colors of grass in the picture I would almost be certain this could be a leech field which might have some thing to do with the root failure of that tree.
 
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